IIARPERS NEW MONTHLY_MAGAZINE, No CLVII JUNE, 186g.VoL. XXVII. 7 // __ TUE OOTJRT-IIOUSE OF THE MILLIA Y OOMMLSSLON. THE INDIAN MASSACRES AND WAR OF 1862. TET us take one of the un a of railroad that, black smoke, and then a floating island, loaded JJ after crossing the rolling prairies of Wis- with men, women, children, horses, boxes, bar- eonsiu or the flat plains of Illinois, reach a ter- rels, boats, coils of rope, piles of wood, bundles, minus ou the banks of the Mississippilet it be and bandboxes, turns the bend of tbe river and the latter. After a ride over a track converging glides to the edge of the warehouse. Be quick, to a focus behind us from its unbrokeu straight- and don~t obstruct the gangway, lest you be ness, we are puffed and steamed into Fulton. jostled into the river by the porters. An- Dont be in a hurry to get on; for if the steaca- other shriek, a few puffs and groans, a huge boat agent told you that the packet would be up splashing, and the leviathan is agaiu in motion, to-morrow morning, you may look for it about steaming its way up the current until, passing twelve hours later. Fir~t a shriek, next a dense prairies stretching away to the foot of the Black Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1863, by Harper and Brothers, in the Clerks Office of the Dis- trict Court for the Southern District of New York. VOL. XXVH.No. 157.A 2 HARPERS NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE. hills, Indian mounds, timber-rafts, flat-boats, villages which expect to become cities, we at last reach St. Paul. Here we are told that the payment of annui- ties to the Sioux Indians, due them three mouths ago, is soon to be made at the Upper Agency, on the Yellow Medicine River; and that for it thousands of Dahkotahs have collected from the little brick farm-houses the Government has built for them, from their sycamore-bark vil- lages, and from their far distant hunting- grounds. Long trains of them, with the poles and skin -coverings of their teepees, their furs, medicine-bags, and other portable effects, drawn by do~s or dragged along on a platform of two poles joined in the middle, one end resting ou a baud across the back of an ox or Indian pony, the other trailing upon the ground. That we may be there during this payment we re-ship ourselves on a smaller boat, and again plow our journey up the tortuous meanderings of the River Minnesota, Muddy Waters, until at length we reach Saint Peter. Two miles below, in an angular bend of the river, stands Traverse des Sioux, where, but four or five years past, the late treaty with the Dahkotahs was compacted, by which they relin- quished their lands on these borders and below to the Mississippi. Then it was but an Indian trading-post, now a flourishing town. Thence, for the Upper Agency, let us engage our seats in the weekly stage, or take a two-horse convey- ance for ourselves alone and journey on with but necessary stoppages at the Prairie Hotel, Travelers Home, etc. On the road we pass numerous wagons heavily ladened, mainly with flour and other commodities for the annuity Indiansi. e., after the traders have cleared from one to five hundred per cent. on them. Yonder is Fort Ridgely, just across that wooded ravine. From here it appears almost impregna- ble; but how different on a nearer approach! Another creek, three miles farther on: they call it the Three-mile Creek. Notice it well, for we may have occasion to come here again. There are some large army wagons filled with soldiers approaching us from the other side. Let us ask that young lieutenant, with his pants tucked to the knees, in cavalry-hoots and lug- ging his sword across his shoulder, whence they are. Blandly we are informed that the hordes of Indians lately assembled at the Yellow Medicine Agency, growing impatient from the delay of their annuities, had evinced signs of dissatisfac- tion, and even threatened violence. For greater security, a company of volunteers stationed at Fort Ridgely had been sent for. ~3n their ar- rival at the Agency a thousand Indian warriors, mounted on their ponies and several thousand more on foot, all painted, with their war cos- tumes, surrounded them, and declared that if a soldier advanced a step fartherif a gun was raised, or a match applied to a cannon, they would kill and scalp every white man they could lay their hands on. A volley and a charge would undoubtedly have cleared a space immediately around our troops: but they were outnumbered thirty to one; what should they do? Major Gal- braith, the Indian Agent, loth to permit such demonstrations to pass unresisted, was urgent to give them at least one volley, or sufficient to dis- perse them; but the officers thought it useless to attempt to cope with such numbers. The Indians, seeing our soldiers unmoved, and apparently awaiting an attack, turned their attention to a more easy and less dangerous con- questthe goods and flour in the warehouse. A few blows with tomahawks and hatchets soon shivering the fragile doors, in they wentthe braves commencing to open boxes and barrels, while the squaws were adjusting their blankets to bear out the spoils. But before they had progressed far, a line of bristling bayonets being brought to bear upon them, they scattered as if a hornets nest had been disturbed in their midst. Major Galbraith, as soon as he could get them sufficiently quieted, addressing them through Antoine Freniere, the interpreter, explained as best he could the reasons of delay; and told tautAN PAcK-ox. THE INDIAN MASSACRES AND WAR OF 1862. 3 them that he would then distribute their blank- high table-land; to the Agency buildings, the ets, with which he desired them to return to warehouse, hotel for the Government employds, their hunting-grounds and homes, as he would small frame church, and traders houses and send a messenger after them as soon as the an- stores, that form the nucleus of the Lower In- unity moneys should come. Reluctantly, with dian Agency. ill-grace, they conceded; and taking each his Here we first see the Dahkotah or Sioux In- blanket, witlj.~ dark scowl they turned again to dians at home. Most of th e from this vicin- their lodges. ity, lately at the Yellow Medicine, have return- Similar demonstrations had occurred before, ed to their lodges. The Bucks are covered and like them this was also supposed wholly to nearly from head to foot with their blankets, have lown over. There being then no longer white, as but a few days ago they received them, any need at the Agency for military support, or colored with their pigments in rude repre- the company had been ordered to report back at sentations of heads, skulls, branches of trees, Fort Ridgely. and the like. Their faces are painted, one half Some eighteen miles f~ rther and again an- perhaps in zi~zag stripes, while the other is speck- other ravine, Birch Cooley, portions of it thick- led as if from a recent attack of measles; or in ly wooded, and closely filled with birch and broad belts around their eyes. They have bows willow brush and tall reeds; admirably adapted and arrows and double-barreled shot-guns, some for a camp ground, if easy access to wood and with two-thirds of their barrels cut off for con- water are the desired requisites; but if security venience in carrying under their blankets. They from surprise to the encamped is demanded one saunter around the stores and boarding-houses of the last places to be chosen. Row this was in groups, smoking their pipes of kinickinick, subsequently illustrated we shall see in the cour -e while the squawsnot unfrequently perform of our narrative, all the work except fighting and eating. In due time we again come to the riverthe Government has expended large sums of mon- same Minnesota. After crossing a bottom of a ey to encourage and assist them in the pursuits couple of miles in width, amidst tall waving of civilization. In addition to the yearly an- reeds and rushes, we arrive at the ferry oppo- unities due each member of a lodge, a civiliza- site the Lower Indian Agency. Oa this side of tion fund provides them with medical attend- the river, to our right, by the waters edge, is a ance, builds and furnishes a house, and prepares comfortable fl-nine house with several stacks of and stocks a farm with necessexy implements wheat and hay around it, the abode of the ferry- and cattle for every Indian who will consent to man. On the farther side, a little above the lay aside his blanket, cut his hair, put on the crossing, is a mill. Safely over the ferry, we white mans clothes, add work; and besides wind up a circuitous path to the level of the pays him so much per yard for all the fence he noes or enAsnA, A civiblain ~NOIAN. 4 HARPEWS NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE. may erect, for all the new land he may put un- der cultivation, and for every bushel of grain or potatoes he may raise in addition to the full ownership of the same. Yet, for all this, it has been with the greatest difficulty that a few have heen persuaded to adopt the dress and the hah- its of the white man. The Indians look upon one of their number who cuts his hair, lays aside his hianket, changes his dress, and goes to work, as having sold his tribal hirth-right. Yet of the few who have heen so persuaded, rarely have any gone hick to their former hah- its. Their small brick houses, showing in every exterior mark and surroufiding that they are not the cottages of Anglo-Americans, dot the prairies between here and the Yellow Medicine, and for miles around and beyond, even as far as Lac Qul Parle, near the sources of the Min- nesota. As we journey on we often find the in- herent Indian chivalry illustrated in the male memhers of a family lounging with tomahawks and kinickinick pipes round the fence corners, or by the road-sides, basking in the sunlight, while the squaws are chopping wood, hoeing corn or potatoes, or taking care of the cattle. Another days travel, and we are at the Red Wood River, flowing quite a depth helow the level of the prairie. Here its hed widens into a hroad basin sloping from either side in jagged descents, roughened with heaps of boul- ders and slabs of limestone. On the edge of the ravine is a little white plastered church; farther down its side a number of cypress hark Indian huts with as many teepees. Having ford- ed the crossing of the river, let us make a short stay, about a mile beyond, at Mr. Reynoldss, who is employed here hy the Government as a teacher to the Indians. Not far from his house are a number of wooden hoxes, supported on high scaffolding, containing Indian bodies placed there to dry up. Having here sufficiently refresh- ed ourselves, we journey on hy Wood Lake; down the wide and beautiful Yellow Medicine ravine; across the clear, rippling stream; past the traders store-houses, brick-yard, Government employds boarding-house, corn-fields, and po- tato patches, to the edge of the farther table- lands; to the Upper Agency huildingslarge stone houses, containing the Government stores and residences of the agent, physician, and others. Beyond us, five miles, through an Indian farm- ing diso ict, similar to that through which we have already passed, is Dr. T. S. Williamsons Mission house at Pa-ju-ta Zee-zee. From 1835, first on the banks of the Mississippi, then at Traverse des Sioux, and since in his present position he has been laboring to civilize and Christianize this people. Two miles farther, ad- joining Mr. Cunninghams Indian boarding- school, is the residence of the Rev. S. R. Riggs. who followed Dr. Williamson in this field of la- bor in the year 1837; first at Lac Qul Parle, out where he and his family were burned out of house and home, and compelled to take refuge for a time in the church; and since in his pres- ent field of labor. Such is a rough outline of the Yellow Medi- cine Agency up in the Indian Country in West- ern Minnesot~, amon~ the Dabkotahs, as it was just hefore the massacres of 1862. On the In- dian Reservation itself there were but few white SQUAWS WINNOWINO WuEAT. THE INDIAN MASSACRES AND WAR OF 1862. 5 inhabitants, and those almost without exception employed in trading or in some capacity by the Government, or engaged as missionaries and teachers. From the very borders of the Reservation the provisions of the Homestead Bill had been tending rapidly to the occupation of all the choicest spots of land on those rich prairies. Little log-huts and frame cottages, made most likely in some other State and transported there in pieces ready to be set up on the spot, were almost continually in sight, increasing in num- bers as you approached St. Peter and Traverse des Sioux or Mankato. Corn and wheat fields, though but of recent commencement, were fre- quent and heavily ladened with their waving harvests, for never had Minnesota been blessed with so abundant a yield as in the fall of 1862. Mills had commenced to turn on the river banks. The inhabitants, mostly German, had come with strong arms and willing hearts to establish a home for themselves and theirs; and no place could he more promising. Through all this dis- trict the Indians still roamed at large. Stop where they would they found a welcome to food, drink, and lodgings, nntil it suited their conven- ience to depart. The Indians had been wronged, but not by the inhabitants: it had been by the traders. The kindness of the missionaries es- pecially could not have been exceeded; their honses were like Indian hotels. They came and went as if all belonged to them. If hungry, they would demand food; if tired, they would lay themselves down wherever they pleased; and leave without a word or look of thanks. A few years ago a young warrior was arrestee for murder, and placed under guard at the Upper or Yellow Medicine Agency. Watching his op- portunity, he made his escape, though fired upon and severely wounded. 2Faint from the loss of blood, he sat down by the roadside at Pa-ju-ta Zee- zee, opposite Dr. Williamsons. A crowd soon collected round him. The Doctor with a friend went prepared to see and dress his wound. He was but entering the crowd when his friend sud- denly screamed, Look out for that knife!~ In- stantly turning, he saw behind him a squaw, a large butcher-knife in her hand, in the very act of plunging it into his back, when by friendly hands her arm had been stayed. The Doctor did not stop to inquire into it, but seeing, as he said, that the danger was over, went on to the young man, examined and bound up his wound. It happened, however, that by imprudent ex- posure or some such cause the Indian died. It is a custom with them, if one of their tribe is killed, for the nearest of kin to avenge his death, by assassinating, not necessarily the author of it himself, but any one if he be but of the same family or race. The father of this Indian went forth with his gun, and concluding that Dr. Williamson would of all be least apt to make much resistance, selected him as the object of his vengeance. The Doctor was at work behind his house in the garden: the family seeing a suspi- cious-looking Indian, painted in his war stripes, prowling around behind the fence, apparently trying to get behind the Doctor, became solicit- ous for him to come in. To satisfy them he went in and sat in a rocking~chair in the front- Da. WILLIAMSONS HOC5E. 6 HARPERS NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE. room, from which a door led out to the piazza, strife between revenge and hunger. He hesi- where were a couple of wooden benches. The .tated, glanced at the Doctor, then at his gun, Indian came round, and, with his gun under his then at the food, then suddenly took the plate blanket, sat down upon one of these. It is a and conimenced eating: as he continued his matter of courtesy with them to always eat when countenance entirely changed, his eyes lost their invited. The Doctors sister went out, and say- wildness, and when satisfied, drawing his blanket ing she thought he must be tired, asked him if around him, he got np~and went away. he would not like something to eat. Speaking Such was the character of th~& Indians, and not a word, but merely shaking his head ~vith a yet among this people the missionaries were la- dark scowl, he refused. The Doctor, who had boring with a degree of success. Mr. Riggs yet apprehended nothing, recognized in this a had reduced their native dialect to a systematic sure sign of hostility. If an Indian will not eat written language, and, with the assistance of in your house, it is certain evidence he means to the other missionaries, made translations of the harm you. Presently he arose, came in, and Bible and a number of miscellaneous books. sat by the door. The Doctor knew that if he Churches had been erected and established; evinced any feelings of alarm he would precipi- schools had been commenced and successfully tate an attack. So he sat still unmoved, look- carried on; families taught the habits and ways ing steadily at the Indian. Miss Williamson of civilization; and their plaintive melodies bent came in with a plate of food and urged him to to sacred words, of which a specimen is here eat. He was tired and hungry. There was a given: Moderato. Wa-kan-tan - ka mah - pi - - ya kin He - ci - ya nan - ka, ta ku - o - - ta.... ya - ka-ga Am-pe-tu-kin he.... o - wa-sin. Qwan - - - hdag Qwan - - - hdag Wa - on.... ci ya - da. Fine. ~3F~__________ Wa-kan-tan-ka ta- ku ni-ta-wa Tan-ka-ya ga - o - ta D.C. Mah - pi - ya kin e-ya-kna - ke ca ma-ka-kin he su - o- wan - Ca, mni - o -wan - Ca. Tu-wes he- Ce- cas ko-ki pa- ko-ki - pc-dan ka!.... ~ Tn- wes he-ce -eas ko-ki - pa ko-ki- pe-dan ka!..,. But every effort to ameliorate the condition and enlighten the minds of those Indians had powerful counter-currents to contend with. An Indian under the influence of whisky could scarcely have a rival in Pandemonium itself. The Government had prohibited its sale, or even transfer into the Reservation; but still it was frequently and abundantly bought and sold, both within and without the lines. For whis ky there was nothing an Indian would not ex- change of all he possessedhis gun, his horse, or even his wife. Some writer, in describing a war council, puts in the mouth of his hero, For an Indian can not lie ! That certainly could not have been among the Sioux. Mr. Pond, one of the missionaries, in speaking of Little Crow, said, He will tell ten lies in succession, and if detected in all of those, will tell an eleventh THE INDIAN MASSACRES AND WAR OF 1862. 7 with such plausibility and earnestness that you ~vill believe him. They were not entirely igno- rant of the extent and character of our country, and of what bad been transpiring in it. Other- Day, Little Crow, and a few others had been sent more than once to Washington. Other- Thy bad brought back with him a white wife. Most of the half-breeds and some Indians could speak and read both English and Dahkotab. Our wnr news as it reached them through the papers, or floating along in gossip, would be taken up and passed on to be circulated among the lodges. The missionaries had all manner of questions put to them: Whether it was true that the South had burned all our large cities, NewYork, Boston, Philadelphia ~ Whether the Great Pa- I ther had been killed or taken prisoner, our armies destroyed, and the enemy were coming to make slaves of all of us? This last was asked by an Indian who could both rend and write English. A number of half-breeds and a few Indians had been enfranchised, and in the efforts of Minne- sota to fill up her quota for the first 300,000 a military ardor had been excited among them; a company organized containing nearly all the / available force at the two Agencies. There, - said the Indians, see how hard pressed the LITTLE CRow. Great Father is for men; all the able-bodied whites are gone, and now they have to come to the power and resources of the enemy, the flood. us for help and take our half-breeds. of wrath they were proposing to turn upon them- You remember the account we received from selves, and the privileges they would forfeit. He the lieutenant of the late disturbance at the laid these reasons before them, and endeavored Upper Agency, and the feelings with which the to dissuade them from a general massacre. He Indians separated. An Indian is not prone himself had adopted our hqbits and modes of quickly to forget. A distance below St. Peter, life; lived in a brick house, sat on chairs, slept on the Minnesota, the bordering forests com- in a bed, and drank whisky as often as he could mence to widen and extend in either direction get it; but still, if the young men were determ- for over a hundred miles. This is the Big med to commence, he was willing and anxious Woods. On the borders of it stood many a to be their lender. settlers cabin, and in it, by the river side, a few A rumor was current among the Indians villages. Thither the Indians were wont to go in with how much truth I can not saythat in the quest of game and fish. On Saturday, the 16th spring of 1862 a Big Man passed through the of Au~ust, 1862., a party of ten Indians made an country from the northwest toward St. Paul, excursion to the Bi~ Woods to exchange their claiming to be a British subject, and. told them furs for wagons. Dis-ippointed in not effecting to rise and kill off all the whites in their midst;. a trade they separated. Four going on farther and promising that, when they attempted it, the got free access to fire-water. Under its in- people from British America would come down fiaence the hatred that had been growing in and help them. Besides no~v, they said,. their breasts, aggravated by their late disappoint- tile men have all gone to the war; no one is ment, broke out. They shot down three men left behind except old men, women, and chil- hy the road-side, buried their tomahawks in dren. We can easily kill them, and help our- their quivering flesh, tore the scalps from off selves to all the plunder we please. Debating their heads before the life had left them, and the question but fanned the flame. The fury of binding the gory trophies to their girdles, re- the few was rapidly disseminating itself through- turned in company with the other six, who had out them all. That nightSabbath night it was rejoined them, to Red Wood. There a council the gory scalps from Red Wood, combed and of their soldiers lodge was convened, and the adorned, were danced around with savage songs matter laid before them. Should the aggressors and yells, and a war fete held to nerve them for be delivered up, or would they all unite in an the carnage of the morrow. The whites were effort to drive the white man wholly from their apprehensive of no dangei; in their several borders, and redress their accumulated wrongs? homes they lived with such security that even Other than between these two they had no al- arms among them were not generally kept. ternative. From the councilat midnightthe Indian Unable to agree they adjourned to the house warriors separated to paint and equip themselves of Little CrowTah-o-ya-tah-doo-ta. Crafty Then silently, in single file, their blankets drawn and cunning, though ambitious, he well knew i close around their guns and tomahawks,. they 8 HARPERS NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE. took their way toward the Lower Agency. The signal for attack, after they had dispersed them- selves throughout the village, preconcerted with Little Crow, was to be the discharge of a gun in a store by the fiag-staffi As the morning dawned, clear and mild, they commenced entering the Agency. A half-breed meeting them inquired the reason of such a concourse. Oh, nothing, they replied; we are only about making an ex- cursion against the Chippeways : and it ap- peared plausible, for Chippeway and Sioux were always at feud. Along the sides of the ware- house and stores, by the barns, behind the fences, each took his position, as he thought, to the great- est advantage. The inmates of the designated store were all astir. Seeing some Indians ap- proaching, and inferring that they might want to make some purchases, one of them unbolted the front door and was shot down on the spot. The signal had been given, and almost simul- taneously a thousand savage war-whoops rent the air. If massacre alone had then been their aim, not one from the Agency would scarce have escaped; hut the horses in the barns, the plun- der in the stor s, and the hopes of finding whis- ky, largely diverted the savages from their mur- derous work. Not many of the whites had yet left their houses, or even their beds. Some of the sav- ages, having led out the horses, fired the barns. Others rushed for the stores and warehouse, shooting before them whomsoever they met, by the road-side, before the doors, or behind the counters. The shelves were soon emptied, with the assistance of the squaws, who had followed for the purposes of plunder, and the spoil carried away to be quarreled over among themselves. Barrels were rolled into, the street, boxes tumbled out, and the buildings enveloped in flames. Then they burst into the mission chapel, board- ing-house, and other dwellings, tomahawk in hand. Some were hewed to pieces ere they had scarce left their beds; others received their death-wounds leaping from windows or endeav- oring to escape. But who can tell the story of that hour? of the massacre of helpless women and children, imploring mercy from those whom their own hands had fed, but whose blood-drippin~ hatch- ets the next moment crashed pitilessly through their flesh and boneof the abominations too hellish to rehearseof the cruelties, the tortures, the shrieks of agony, the death-groans, of that single hour? The few that escaped by any means heard enough, saw enough, felt enough to engage their utmost powers. Those that staid behind never told their story. From house to house the torch soon followed the hatchet; the flames envel- oped alike the dead, dying, and wounded. Tired of butchery in detail the savages fired a dwelling, and in it burned alive a mother and her five children; a few of their charred bones were aft- erward found among the ashes. Sonie escaped through back doors, over fields, down the side of the bluff to the river. Those fortunate enough to get over by the ferry or otherwise hastened with utmost speed to the fort. Others hid among the bushes, in hollow logs or holes,~behind stumps, INnIAN CAMP AT RED wooD. THE INDIAN MASSACRES AND WAR OF 1862. 9 or in the water. Maddened with unresisted suc- fore he had time to load again the Indians broke cessfor not a shot, not a blow had yet been in; the family rushed out by the back way, but 1imed at themwith fiendish yells the Indians before th~y had gone many yards the father, mo- followed or sought new victims among yet un- ther, and son were killed. The daughter, seeing suspecting settlers. The ferry was taken p05- herself alone, fell likewise, and holding her session of, the ferry-mans house, the neighbor- breath feigned herself dead. The savages came ing stacks, the mills, the piles of lumber, were up and commenced hacking and mutilating the set on fire. The ferry-man himself, tomahawked bodies. Seizing the girl by her ~feet they began before his own door, was disemboweled, his head, to drag her off. As she instantly made an effort hands, and feet chopped off and inserted in the to adjust herself, they took her and sent her cavity. They overtook a boy trying to escape. hack with the others they had captured. Only Tearing off every thread of clothing, they pricked those that might serve their base passions were and pierced him with their blunt-headed jave- saved, the rest were shot down and butchered or lins, laughing at and mimicking his agony till tortured to death by inches. death came to his relief. Narcis Gerrian, as As soon as the first refugees reached th~ fort they entered, leaped from the mill-window for and communicated the tidings, a handful of the river; ere he had reached it of three shots soldiersa part of a companywere sent out they fired at him two pierced his breast. He under Captain Marsh to quell the disturb- swam across, almost drowned. Four days he ance. Indians are fierce and brutal, but they went without food, and after dragging himself, are no less cunning. With utmost speed, in more dead than alive, through woods and swamps, Government mule-wagons, they started for the for sixty-five miles, was found by a party of refu- Lower Agency. On the way they passed num- gees and carried to Henderson. Passing a stick bers escaping from the scene of carnage: they through both ankles of a woman, they dragged saw mangled bodies, and the blazing or smoul- her over the prairie, till from that alone, torn and dering ruins, but not an Indian. They neared the ferry and found it unoccupied. Leaving mangled, she died. Those that escaped spread the alarm. As some twenty to hold it, the Captain with about they heard it the people fled precipitately, scarce forty of his men leaped upon a raft and corn- knowing whither they went. After them the In- menced crossing; yet not an Indian was seen. dians followed throughout the entire line of set- They had scarcely reached the middle of the tlements, over a frontier of hundreds of miles, stream when, with deafening yells, a raking vol- committing such barbarities as could scarce be ley from all sides poured upon them; the water exceeded if all hell were turned loose. N0t far boiled with bullets. Among the first fell the from the Agency a few families of settlers had Captain, backward into the rivernot one es- congregated. The Indians overtook them. The caped from that raft. The twenty on the bank first volley killed the few men among them. The retreated, firing behind them as they went. Not defenseless, helpless women and children, hud- half of their number reached the fort. The dled together in the wagons, bending down their others who fell by the road-side were stripped of heads, and drawing over them still closer their their arms and accoutrements, and hewed and shawls. Cut-Nose, while two others held the hacked in pieces. The number of refugees at the horses, leaped intoawagon that contained eleven, fort hourly increased, bringing with them marks mostly children, and deliberately in cold blood and incidents of horror the recital of which tomahawked them allcleft open the head of would fill volumes. Every available spot in each, while the others, stupefied with horror, and around the buildings was being occupied; powerless with fright, as they heard the heavy, the attention of every one was engrossed in pro- dull blows crash and tear through flesh and viding for the wounded as they were brought in. bones, awaited their turn. Taking an infant The stock of provisions in store was not large; from its mothers arms, before her eyes, with a the amount of ammunition small. No one ex- bolt from one of the wagons, they riveted it pected to feed such numbers, or to shoot, except through its body to the fence, and left it there to at prairie chickens or a target. The entire force die, writhing in agony. After holding for a at Fort Ridgely, after the loss of Captain Marshs while the mother before this agonizing spectacle, company, comprised thirty soldiers, and eleven they chopped off her arms and legs and left her half-breeds with arms, and one twenty.five and to bleed to death. Thus they butchered twen- another six-pound howitzer. Under the protec- ty-five within a quarter of an acre. Kicking the tion of these not less than five hundred women bodies out of the wagons they filled them with and children, and men without arms or any plunder from the burning houses, and sending means of defense, had assembled. Shortly be- them back pushed on for other adventures, fore the return of news from Captain Marsh, They overtook other parties, killed all the what should arrive at the Fort, on its way to the men and children, and led away the young wo- Yellow Medicine Agency, but the annuity money men and girls captive for fates worse thandeath. itself? Thefunds, without any investigation, had One family of a son and daughter, and their been been taken to meet some claims of the parents, received the alarm. Before they had traders, and then more had been hastily scraped time to escape they heard the war-whoop, and together to avoid an outbreakbut too late. saw dusky forms approach the door. The father With the escort that brought the payment fired a shot at them through the window. Be- money came Henry Balland. He had lived in 10 HARPERS NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE. the Indian country for twenty-seven years, been howitzers were directed. Several times Indians constantly and intimately associated with them, came within a hairs-breadth of stumbling over and shea them in their furious as well as pacific Balland as he was cautiously trying to crawl off moods. He had known for years that hatred to a place of greater security. But now the a~. against.the whites was rankling in their hearts; tillery commenced playing directly toward him, but yet, even with all that he saw and heard placing him thus in double danger. The In- around him, it seemed impossible for him to be- dians carried on the attack briskly; and though lieve that it amounted to more than a drunken they had no artillery, they sen~ a hail-storm of frolic, in which some of the traders, and per- bullets through the windows and among those haps a few others, had been butchered. Soon managing the howitzers. How long the rapid- the remnant from Captain Marshs company ly-thinning garrison might have been able to rushed in with their tale of defeat and horror. withstand them, and prevent the slaughter that While the ears of all were still tingling with it would have inevitably followed their capitula- Jack Frazier, barely with his life, brought word tion or defeat, I can not say, had not Providence thair Little Crow and his hand were about to interposed in their behalf. A furious storm attack the fort. Incredulous still, Henry Bal- arose. Peal followed peal in unbroken succes- land determined to go out and see for himself sionthe rain poured a sheet of water. With a whether there was really any cause for all this yell of disappointment and defiance the Indians alarm. Leaving the fort, partly concealed by a hastily scampered to the shelter of the woods, clump of hushes, he had gone but a little distance and behind trees, wrapping their blankets about when he heard from those behind him the cry, their guns, bending over them, while the rain Arm! arm! The Indians are coming. He furiously beat around, labored to keep their had scarce time to cast a glance around him locks and powder dry. The temporary respite when he heard the rapid clatter of horses hoofs was diligently improved by the garrison: the nearing him from all sides. The next moment, women and children, for greater protection, with war-whoops and yells, already flushed with were laid flat on the floor behind stone-walls; victory, firing a volley of bullets over his head, hasty rations were distributed, and preparations they attacked the fort. His retreat was cut off, made to receive another attack, by piling up Toward him, right on to him, were galloping boxes, barrels, and cord-wood, as a barricade, the Indians. Escape, even concealment for a and throwing earth over them. moment more, seemed impossible. lie fell fiat Balland was yet unable to retreat; between upon his face among the bushes, and commenced him and the fort still crouched groups of Indians worming his way toward the river. At any oth- awaiting a lull in the storm. Pulling himself er time every motion of his would have been forward prostrate, he reached the brow of a hill. readily seen; but then the savages were fully He could see only a few yards before him. He engaged with making the attack. In the fort, got up on his feet, and had advanced but a few then under the command of Lieutenant Shelley, steps farther when, directly in front of him, in considering all the disadvantages the garrison the very way he was going, not twenty feet dis- labored under, admirable coolness and tact were tant, were several Indians. At first he gave evinced. The riflemen speedily took their po- himself up as irretrievably lost. Another mo- sitions, as previously selected, at windows and meat showed him that, as the rain was beating loopholes, where ammunition and all else they from his direction, they were standing with needed was handed them. their backs toward him to receive it. Again he The two howitzers were drawn out, and, threw himself down, and made on all fours for guided by Sergeant Jones, commenced an ef- the thickets; there entering the river, he waded fective action. The Indians have always had a down stream near the bank, up to his chin in great dread of those big guns. Were it not water, for about a mile. The storm had abated. for them the fort would certainly have been taken Again he heard the Indians renew their attack, soon after the first attack; and even then, if the but this time with less fury than before. It Indians in a body had made a vigorous charge, was near night; a few volleys were inter- they would have swept the whole before them. changed with but little effect. Darkness en- The fort was like a pile of chaft with a wind shrouding them, the Indians repaired to a neigh- raging and tearing around it sufficiently strong boring flat, and, after gormandizing on oxen to whirl it up and scatter it abroad in atoms they there killed, partly roasted or raw, spent needing but the ri~ht direction of its power to most of the remaining night in wild orgies and effect that end. Besieging in Indian warfare dances round scalps they had takenrecounting was to them entirely a new tactic. Accustom- the exploits of the day, and boasting of still ed to fight scattered abroad over the prairies, greater ones on the morrow. Coming out of among the thickets, they were unprepared to the river, Balland pulled some grass, and tying make a charge; had they been, Fort Ridgely it around him, that he might appear as much as to-day would have presented but a heap of ruins possible like, a pile of hay, effected his escape. and blackened hones. As the shells commenced Four more days the Indians hesieged that to burst among them they fell back to positions fort. Gallantly the little garrison held out, for- of greater security, behind the log-buildings, in tifying and strengthening their position through the tall grass and bushes, and in holes, whence the night, defending themselves through the they continued their fire. Toward these the day. The enemy made strenuous efforts to set THE INDIAN MASSACRES AND WAR OF 1862. 11 the main buildings on fire, by shooting from their bows blazing arrows into the roofs. To prevent this the soldiers had, during the night, covered them with a layer of earth. But they could not hold out much longer. Their provi.. sion was all gone; their ammunition nearly spent; and themselves almost fainting from ex- haustion. Their communications had been quite cut off. Whatever assistance and reinforce- ments might have been sent them from St. Pe- ter or elsewhere were entirely precluded. They had not even been able to send a messenger stating their condition, and asking for help, since the fir-st battle on Monday afternoon. Be- ginning to despair of success, on Friday the In- dians made their most desperate charge. Had not the garrison fortified themselves to their ut- most with intrenchments and barricades, the savage flood would have overwhelmed them; but, with the invaluable support of the artillery, they held their ground. As the Indians com- menced to climb up the stables a shell was projected, which, hursting, enveloped them in flames. At sundown the savages returned to their camp, about a mile to the right of the road, between the fort and the Three-Mile Creek, and were soon busily engaged butchering cattle for their evening meal. Not all engaged in the outbreak had taken an active part in the siege of Fort Ridgely. War- parties, slaughtering, plundering, and burning, rehearsing again the blood scenes of the Lower Agency, traversed the country around bearing destruction, death, and desolation before them. They attacked the farmers house just beyond the bridge over the Three-Mile Creek. For a time he returned their fire through a window. After his wife and children had sunk beside him, pierced with bullets, he leaped from the house and ran. Before he had gone many yards he also fell; his oldest son ran in the op- posite direction, but was overtaken and toma- hawked by the road-side. The family at Red Wood hearing of the ap- proach of the Indians, hastily fled, part in one wagon along the road, while the three girls and the hired man drove across the prairie toward Pattersons Rapids. A war-party meeting the former left them lying by the road-side, and drove off their wagon; then coming to the house and finding it deserted, they set it on fire and followed on the tracks of the rest. They over- took them near the river, killed the young man and one of the girls, and pierced another through her breast, and then took her and the other girl captive and drew lots between them how many should have each; the bleeding, fainting girl died from the successive abuse of sixteen. Antoine Freniere found a house in which seven children, the oldest a girl not over twelve, were huddled together in one bed; hearing his footsteps, they pulled the bed-clothes further over their heads and lay trembling. It was im- possible to take any of theni along with him. Going into the cellar, and finding a pan of milk, he brought it and gave it to them, and promising to come again and remove them, was obliged to leave theni there and go on. Afterward when others came there, they found that the Indians hatchet had already done its work.Not far from the house lay killed, upon her back, a mo- ther, with her infant left crying upon her breast. The dead, as well as the living, were outraged and mutilated by the savages. They, killed a farmer in his house, and laying him on the table braced open his mouth with a sticks and left it filled with milk. They left another to be eaten by a hog, which they drove in and shut up in the same room; afterward nothing but his bones and the hog were found. They tore out the heart of another, and left it fastened on a stick stuck up beside him. The extent to which they car-~ ned these outrages depended upon the time they had for their execution and the mood in which they happened to be. If they had time to kill but few of a settlement, and burn but part of the houses, they seemed invariably to light upon the traders and those that had sold them whisky; for though they were passionately fond of fire-water they hated the men that had brought it among them. During the Sabbath and Monday, when all this was going on at the Lower Agency and be- low, the people at the Yellow Medicine and the mission beyond were still in utmost security, un- apprehensive of the least danger. On that Sab- bath the missionaries held service and preached in the Dahkotah language as usual, and also celebrated the Lords Supper. It was noticed that the Indians acted strangely. One old squaw blustered into Mr. Riggss, and demanded a calf as payment for some depredations one of his hogs, she said, had committed in her potato- patch. On being refused, she went off mutter- ing that he might as well give it to her then, as she would have it any how pretty soon. Some Indians went into Dr. Williamsons barn and loosed and led away two of his horses. The Doctor called after them; but they only turned, laughed at him, and galloped off. Another couple would have taken away the remaining ones had not the Doctor met and prevented them. On his asking them why they treated him so, whether he had not always been kind to them, fed them, clothed them, and given them medi- cine whenever they were in need of it, they re- plied that they meant him no harm, but that some one would have the horses, and that they might have them as well as any one else. The Indians immediately in this vicinity were not among the instigators of this outbreak. Most of them were farmerssome members of the mission churches. For these causes the Lower and the Blanket Indians looked down upon and despised them, and when they afterward came up among them, burned their houses, laid waste their fields, and compelled them to change the dress of the white mtin for the breech-cloth and blanket, and go with them in their war-parties and to their battles. On that Monday, fearing no danger, we were scattered abroad from Dr. Williamsons house 12 HARPERS NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE. as the business or fancy of each suggested. Medicine Agency, and commenced their work Some were in the hay field, some hunting, swim- ~f destruction; others were hastening toward ming, fishing, or sketching. In the evening the mission houses. Convinced that it was no when we returned we found the family in great longer prudent to remain, Doctor and Mrs. Wil- alarm. Vague rumors had reached them of hiamson, and his sister, in an ox cart, started aft- trouble among the Indians; ~nd though yet not er us. Lorenzo (or Toon-wan-e-tay) and Chas- fully substantiated, they had produced consider- I ka walked along with them for several miles, able apprehension. Groups of the Farmer In- and when they saw a war-part~r approaching dians would collect round the door or in the covered them up with a buffalo-robe, and driv- house and talk over what they bad heard that ing on the team replied to inquiries put them, the Blanket Indians had done at the Lower that they had nothing but their own goods. A Agency and around; how that they had killed little incredulous, some of the Indians would all the settlers, besides a company of soldiers, have raised up the edge of the robe and looked and captured and completely burned down Fort under, hut Lorenzo with his gun stepped between Ridgely. Some of them watched with us, hut and threatened to shoot the first man that touched .when the dangers thickened around their places it. Leaving them, the war-party went on far- knew them no longer. Chaska, Paul, Ma-za- ther, and soon came across our tracks. There, ku-ta-ma-ni, and Enos, however, were constant said they, are the tracks of Dr. Williamson to the last, and did all in their power to assist and Mr. Riggs; they cant be far distant, let us us. Toward morning rumors came thicker and overtake and kill them ! On they came; in darker, that they had already commenced work half an hour more they would have been up at the Upper Agency, and would before long he with us. down upon us. Some were for instant flight, The same thunder-storm that was then pro- others thought it only a scare,~~ and had no tecting the fort from destruction began to throw doubt that it would blow over shortly. Not one its shield around us. The rain completely oh- of us, even the most timid, had the least concep- literated our tri~cks. Concluding that we had tion of its extent and magnitude. As the day not enough plunder to make it worth while to dawned the Indians around us grew bolder. The overtake and kill us, especially as it was raining squaws went over the house taking and appro- and they were hungry, the savages turned off printing whatever they fancied. Some of them and went to the Big Woods. They entered a brought out the sugar-barrel, and after helping house in which were two men, one of whom themselves sufficiently, distributed it around. they killed with the first shot. The other, Others emptied the feather-beds on the floor, Richard Roe, received a bullet in the thigh; he and passing their heads through the ticking wore turned and ran to the window, and was jumping them off as coats. We began to think it was from it when they stabbed him in the back with time to leave. Having hastily unloaded a wag- a butcher knife, and chased him until exhausted on of hay, which had been driven in the night with loss of blood he fell, when thinking him previous, led by Chaska to a fording of the river dead, they hastened back to quarrel over the with which we were unacquainted, driving along division of the spoils. He soon got up, and a few head of cattle, all of us, except Doctor and pushing on overtook us. We bound up his Mrs. Williamson and the Doctors sister, who wounds the best we could, and laid him in one had determined to stay behind a while longer, of the wagons wrapped up in a shawl. That commenced our escape. night was spent in a cold drizzling rain. The Having got the wagons and cattle across the next day we again journeyed on, scarce knowing river we left them in a flat of tall rushes in whither; our main object being to keep out of charge of the ladies, and went off in search of sight and avoid meeting the Indians. From Mr. Riggss party, who were hiding, we were told, the distance over the prairies we saw some fig- in a thicket about a mile below. At last, after a ures approaching us. Few of the party evinced good deal of fruitless search, Paul Ma-za-ku-ta- the least signs of alarm. One of our number ma-ni led one of us to them on an island in the rode up to them and soon returned, not with In- river. Some of the Indians had met a part of dians, but with three German refugees from the them just after they had left their houses, and Yellow Medicine Agency. A war-party, they ordering them out they drove off the wagon and said, had killed a number there, pillaged the left them to continue their journey on foot. stores and burned most of the buildings; they Their remaining horses, after they had got to themselves with the utmost difficulty had es- the island, the Indians had taken away, promis- caped. Our provisions were all gone; a small ing to return them when they got ready, as it piece of raw pork was all we had left. Through- was by all means best, they said, for the mis- out the entire night again it rained. Heroical- sionaries to stay there a few days, especially as ly did the women and children bear up under they were entirely destitute of provisions, and it; and, in fact, throughout the whole trip. It the island was filled with mosquitoes. We ci- is easy for one to keep up courage when his fected a junction with each other a few miles blood is warm; but in a half freezing, drizzling farther down, and continued our journey, num- rain, trickling drop by drop through the clothes, bering in all forty, though with not half a dozen and seemingly to the very bones, lying in a puddle men, and almost entirely destitute of arms. By of mud and water, courage, if it exist, is truly a this time a war-party had reached the Yellow genuine article. Next morning we arose, and THE INDIAN MASSACRES AND WAR OF 1862. 13 THE BREAKFAST ON THE P AIRIE. performing our toilets, like a Newfoundland dog a partridge, tried to get around behind him. just ont of a mill-pond, with a hearty shake to Each turned continually in a wider arc. What dry ourselves, strode or waddled toward a thicket the Indian was after was to get to a place of some ten miles distant, where we hoped to col- security before he attacked him, until which he lect a few sticks with which to cook our break- did not dare to shoot, lest missing his aim he fast, which we drove along before us on the might endanber himself. They kept turning hoof; for not a mouthful else had we. First, until the Indian, finding that he could not get however, several creeks had to be crossedone, behind him, beckoning to him to leave, slipped in particular, over which we had to lead the behind a knoll and escaped. A few yards dis.. unhitched teams, for the mud was so soft that tant, by a fence, lay tomahawked a mother and it was impossible for them to pull the wagons her three children. In a house within sight had over; then, having transported acrOss most been a sick woman. When the alarm reached of the women and children as best we could, them she was unable to leave her bed; her two we drew them by hand over reeds and grass sons carried her out on a straw mattress, and in bent down to prevent the wheels from cutting a wagon had tried to escape. The Indians over- in. But when we got nearer we found a marsh took them, killed the sons, and piling some full three miles in width, between us and our brush around the mattress, burned the sick wo- only chance for breakfast, save of raw flesh. man alive. A few of us walked over the floating sod, and We then were in the greatest danger we had brought over on our shoulders a supply of dry yet encountered. At that very time the plain wood. Then we killed calf, and at about three around the fort was alive with Indians, and the in the afternoon had our breakfast of partly roast- battle was raging furiously. Toward sundown ed or smoked veal, we started again, and pushed on rejoicing in the The next day was Fridaythe day on which prospect of soon being in safety. the Indians were making their most desperate The contemporary occurrences at the fort I and strenuous attack upon the fort. Uncon- have already rehearsed; the charge, the burning scions of all this, nearly every one of us was eager of the stables, the retreat of the Indians to their to hasten directly to it, thinking thai once there camp, about a mile from the road we had just the danger would have ~11 been passed. About enteredthe first one we had taken since we left noon we reached Birch Cooley, where Dr. Will- the mission. Ere we had journeyed far in it, as iamson, in his ox wagon, overtook us. One of night began to gather around us, on the brow our number strayed off a little distance, and en- of the opposite hill we saw two Indians. They countered a solitary Indian who would have fled; rode along a little distance on their ponies par- but the next moment he turned, and with his allel with us, reconnoitring our train; then gun held at an angle as if he was approaching turned and galloped off to collect a party to fol 14 HARPERS NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE. low us. Not far ahead was the Three-Mile Creek. Having been seen, we then expected to be attacked there. Drawing up our line in mili- tary order as far as possible, we marched on. Traces of massacre and butchery began to grow more frequent. The boy that had fled from the house by the Creek we found lying where he fell by the road-side. Moving him a little out of the way we passed on. Along the road were scat- tered parts and remnants of the plunder which the savages had takenfurniture, letters, papers, books, and pieces of clothing. Silently we ap- proached the house. Not a voice disturbed the stillness save the barking of the dogsthe sole survivors of all that had lived there. We passed on, and commenced descending to the bridge. Not a voice was heard save for necessary or- ders. We tightened our grasp on our weapons, with an inward vow that our arms should be powerless and our hearts still before harm befell the loved ones in our care. But we crossed un- touched. At that moment we saw a rocket, then an- other, again another ascend from the fort. En- tirely forgetful of their being signals of dis- tress, we felt confident that they were beacons to guide us on. One of us having gone in advance, entered the fort on his hands and knees; passed the blazing stables, the skulking Indians, and reached the garrison. Surprised at his exploit, they bade him immediately return, and if possi- ble prevent the rest from following, or even mak- ing the attempt, which they thought would lead to certain death. They told him of their ex- hausted condition, the length of the siege they had sustained, and the trembling multitude al- ready under their care. Still other rockets were sent up from the fort. Confident of safety ahead, all were advancing with light step, when he reached us and delivered his message from the garrison urging us to turn aside. Our warming hearts felt as if a load of frozen mercury was let down into them. Some were determined at least to make the effort. After having nearly reached a place, as we supposed, of safety, then, when we knew the blood-hounds to be on our very track, to turn right back again among them, was at the least discouraging. But we turned off; and went to the left. Within ten minutes, scarce a quarter of a mile from the road, we halted to consider which way we should go. The two Indians that had seen and reconnoi- tred our party ~vent with utmost haste and car- ried the news to their camp. Just then the braves were hungry, they were killing beef. As soon as possible they formed a party and fol- lowed ns. As we were waiting to consider we heard a noise approaching up the road; we heard the dogs at the desolate house bark louder as they passed. But it was dark, and the glare of the burning stables blinded their eyes. They did not see us, but hastened on still further in quest of us. With as little noise as possible we journeyed on till we came to another creek. There, while seeking a fording place, ~ve heard something strange in the bushes; then a pro- longed scream. Some were urgent to hasten even then for the fort, confident that Indians were in wait for us in the bush. Death in- evitable seemed to be lurking directly ahead. Others thought the noises we heard were but from foxes, or, at the worst, thinking we had but little to choose, urged anattempt to cross. Be- fore we had gone far on the othem side our ex- hausted teams gave out. To advance, though yet in the very jaws of death, was impossible. We unhitched and let them graze. Then so tired and worn were all that they sank down upon the wet grass to rest. One of us, with his rifle on his shoulder, stood guard. We all knew that we had been followed. Toward daybreak is the time usually chosen for an Indian attack. As we neared it our danger again increased. Be- fore the first dawn of morning had lit the east we again were moving. Four of our number left us, and went toward New Ulm. They had scarce passed behind a knoll a mile distant when we heard four guns almost at once. Afterward the decayed bodies of those men were found there, where they fell. That Saturday morning, August 23, after vigorously besieging the fort for five days, de- spairing of ultimate success in taking itfor they did not know of the helpless condition to which they had already reduced the garrison the Indians commenced to transfer their main attack upon New Ulm. They left their camp- ing-ground by the road-side, where we had pass- ed them the night previous unharmed, though how I can not say, for it was through the very court-yard of deathafew still remaining around the fort, to preclude the arrival of reinforce- ments, that they might starve the garrison out. Early at daybreak the Indians, passing through the tall, dew-dripping grass, neared New Ulm. Not five miles beyond it our party was passing. We heard the rattle of their guns; we saw the smoke and flames, as they enveloped house aft- er house, ip which the savages had first butcher- ed or tortured to death the inmates. Hastily the men, with what few arms they had, collect- ed together in the centre of the village to defend to the last themselves and theirs. Fiercely throughout that day the battle raged. A few brick buildings in the main street, parallel with the river, sheltering all that could get to them, enabled the inhabitants to return with consider- able effect the Indian fire. But all around they laid waste in blood and flames. The stores, the mills, the houses, the barns, the stacks of new- ly-gathered hay and grain, all s ut up clouds of black smoke, and lit the sky with their glare throughout the next night. Even the brick houses would soon have been taken, had not, toward evening, Judge Flandran from St. Pe- ter providentially arrived with reinforcements. With a company of horsemen he charged upon the savages, and, after a vigorous engagement, routed them and entered the village, but not un- til after carnage and destruction had complete- ly ruined it. Bringing together the gory, mu- tilated dead they could rescue from the flames, THE INDIAN MASSACRES AND WAR OF 1862. 15 the surviving inhabitants buried them in the street, for yet the Indians lurked around. Even had they been able to go without and bury tbem, the insatiate devils would not have suffered them to rest, but have dug them up again, and scat- tered the bodies abroad in pieces. Putting the wounded in wagons, they made speedy prepara- tions to evacuate the village; and the next day, after seeing sights that would chill the strongest heart, stripped of all they had, exhansted, worn, ~ad bleeding, the inhabitants in a long train of wagons started for St. Peter, leaving New Ulm, deserted and nearly destroyed, in possession of Judge Flandran and his men, and, soon after, of a detachment of Colonel Sibleys troops. By this place, within sight of it, while this battle was raging in its height, we passed. Far- ther on was the Norwegian Grove. There, that night, another scene of blood was enacted. The inhabitants were all massacred, mangled, and mutilated, and their houses and barns re- duced to ashes. From this place, not two miles distant, we entered a house and slept through the remainder of the night. Those that had fled from that house not two hours before we en- tered it were already dead; but we then knew it not, and even had we, we were so completely exhausted that I doubt whether we would have done much otherwise. Beyond this, though not at once entirely safe, our danger lessened, and we soon separated, to St. Peter, St. Paul, or back am in the military expedition. The entire country from Fort Ridgley, New Ulm, and the Norwegian Grove, almost to St. Paul, was completely panic-stricken. The set- tlers even far beyond the line of danger precip- itately left their homes, fled from ten to thirty miles according to the height of their excite- ment, and stopped in some deserted house, whose inhabitants in like excitement had aban- doned their homes; and so on, like the waves on the sea, each falling where the other h risen from. The rich harvests, even where the torch of the Indian had not touched them, were for the greater part lost merely from the want of timely care. Terribly destructive as the out- break had been, this thoughtless stampede caused yet greater loss of property. The streets of St. Peter and St. Paul were, in fact, glutted with the wagons and temporary shelter of refugees from even within ten miles around, while the massacre had not approached within a hundred miles of St. Paul. While we had been making our escape from the Mission I)istrict another party, led by John Other-Day, had fled from the Yellow Medicine Agency, and by a more secluded route reached Henderson. On that memorable Monday, as soon as they there heard of the approaching storm, the whites and some of the half-breeds collected hastily in the Government warehouse. They had arms and ammunition in abundance; for three tons of powder and a large amount of lead were then in store, nearly all of which the Indians soon after appropriated. Sixty-two from the houses around collected together, but think- OTaEr.-nAY. ing it might soon blow over, determined at least for a time to make a stand. They filled a num- ber of barrels with water, to extinguish the flames in case of fire, loaded their guns, and, taking their several places on guard, concluded to wait and see what would come of it. About ten that evening, in the valley below, by the flag-staff, the Indians commenced breaking open the stores, killing those they met, and helping themselves to the spoils and plunder. The squaws again were busy receiving, distributing, and quarreling over the division of it. Seven times they shot at Garvie, and twice pierced bins with bullets. I-Ic leaped from an np-stair win- dow, ran across a potato field by no means the smoothest, marking his tracks with his blood, and reached the warehouse. Other-Day and Fadden, disguising themselves in blankets, secretly entered the ravine to see the extent of the ruin. Soon returning, they reported that if they staid there much longer they would all be massacred. With utmost speed they got together what wagons they had, and before day- break had deserted the warehouse, and, guided by Other-Day, were fleeing for their lives. As soon as they found this out the next day the In- dians started in quest of them; but fortunately, according to the information they bad received, down the fort road, while Other-Day sagacious- ly had led the party in quite a different direc- tion, else with others around them their bones would also have bleached upon the prairie. They escaped in safety, though after great suf- ferings. From Cedar City and about all the inhabit- ants collected, with a few of their portable effects, on Cedar Island, around which a lake of about a mile in width rendered them comparatively secure. Beyond the Yellow Medicine Agency, and the missions around it, were very few white inhabitants. Mr. Huggins had a mission sta 16 HARPERS NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE. tion at Lac Qui Pane; a few miles farther on, at Big Stone Lake, the head waters of the Min~ nesota, five Germans from New Ulm were em- ployed in burning charcoal. These ,Ithink, were all. The news had scarcely reached Mr. Hug- gins when it was confirmed hy the presence of the savages. As he was attempting to talk with them they killed him before the eyes of his wife and children; then pillaged and burned his house, and led his family captive west of Lake Traverse toward the Red River. The first news the men at Big Stone Lake received of it was about daybreak by a volley which killed at once four of them. The remaining one, Anthony Menderfield, was pursued down the declivity to- ward the shore of the lake by three Indians, hurling their javelins and shooting at him with poisoned arrows. Through the brush, over the sharp rocks and boulders, barefoot, as he had risen from his bed, he ran headlong into the water, there not deep, but partly filled with tall reeds, wild rice, and floating vines. Among and under these he ducked and dove and dodged around to evade his pursuers, who in canoes searched for him till tired, hut without success, on account of the mist and rain that obscured the atmosphere. Thence over the rough and sharp-cutting prairie grass, with his bare feet lacerated and bleeding, he made his escape by walking through the night to avoid being seen, and hiding through the day in hollow logs or tall grass. I have given hut the briefest outline of the late massacre in Minnesota, in which not less than a thousand men, women, and children were indiscriminately murdered and tortured to death, and barbarities of the most hellish magnitude committed. Massacre itself had been mercy if it coTuld have purchased exemption from the re- volting circumstances with which it was accom- panied; the torture of unborn infants torn from their bleeding mothers, and cast npon their breast; rape and violence of even young girls till death closed the horrid scene of suffering and shame. Nothing which the brutal lust and wanton cruelty of those savages could wreak npon their helpless and innocent victims was omitted from the category of their crimes. Help- lessness and innocence indeed, which move pity in any breast but theirs, seemed to inspire them only with a more fiendish rage.* I have given but a small portion of it. Over a frontier of five hundred miles, from Fort Abercrombie on the Red River to Mankato on the Blue Earth, they carried the torch and the hatchet. The outraged inhabitants, driven from their homes, wandered over the prairies enduring hardships, trials, and sufferings second only to those immediately in- flicted by the Indians themselves. One little boy not ten years of ageBurton Eastlickalternately carried and led by the hand his younger brother of five, taking every precau- tion to avoid being seen, for eighty miles to Fort Ridgely, and safely arrived there with him, hav- ing accomplished a heroic deed of which any * (*overuor Ramsey. man might boast. A woman with her three children escaped from their home with barely their lives. The youngest, an infant, she car- ried in her arms; the other two little girls walk- ed and ran painfully along by her side through the tangled brush and brier-vines. They lived on wild plums and berries, and when those were gone by the frost, on grape teiidrils and roots. They coverted like a brood of partridges, trem- bling, starving, nearly dead.The infant was taken home to Heaven.The mother laid its body nnder a plum bush; scraped together a heap of dried leaves and covered it; placed a few sticks over them to prevent the rude winds from blowing them away; then looking hastily around again fled with her remaining ones. It was seven weeks ere they were found and res- cued. Some of less nerve completely lost their mind by the first fright, and wandered about de- mented through the thickets till found. Governor Alexander Ramsey, as soon as he received the first news from the Lower Agency and Red Wood, hastened from St. Paul to Fort Snelling, and ordered four companies of the Sixth Regiment, which had just been organ- ized, to march at once to the scene of disturb- ance, and Hon. H. H. Sibley*~than whom, from his long residence among and intimate acquaint- ance with Indian character, no other could have been more fitwas designated to the command. Soon after seven other companies were sent on under Colonel Crooks with orders to report to Colonel Sibley. To this force were afterward added portions of the Seventh and Third regi- ments. In the mean time also companies of mounted citizens were organized throughout the State, and sent to different endangered points. Some of them did efficient service; others blus- tered about a while, and when the first excite- ment bad died awaywhen they might have been most usefulgot tired of it, disbanded, and went home. While the main body of troops were marching with utmost celerity up the Minnesota Valley to the immediate theatre of trouble, smaller de- tachments of a company or so were stationed in the most exposed localities. Some of these re- mained undisturbed; others had brisk engage- ments with the Indians, and were greatly har- assed by incursionary parties. Captain Strouts company, stationed at Cedar City, whence, as we have seen above, all the inhabitants had fled, was unexpectedly attacked by a hundred and fifty Indians. Gallantly they stood their ground for a time; but having been taken unawares, and overpowered by numbers, they had to retreat to a place more securely fortified. They according- ly fell back to Hutchinson. An attack was made at the same time on Forest City, which had been fortified by its own and the neighbor- ing inhabitants successfully they repulsed it, and drove the savages back. Falling back, they again attacked the company at Hutchinson, who this time drove them off. And so also in * I regret not having been able to obtain for insertion the portrait of Colonel Sibley. THE INDIAN MASSACRES AND WAR OF 1862. 17 other small places the Indians kept up a series of guerrilla attacks with more or less effect. A detachment of mounted men under Lieutenant- Colonel MPhail, sent forward by Colonel Sibley, reinforced Fort Ridgely, and enabled the host of nearly starved refugees to go to places of greater security and comfort. Colonel Sibley, with a force of fifteen hundred men, reached Fort Ridgely by the way of St. Peter on Thursday, August 28, but found not an Indian to oppose him, though the smouldering embers of the stables, sutlers stores, and other outbuildings still cast up lurid, flickering flames and dingy smoke - wreaths from their heaps of half-con- sumed ruins. The walls of the remaining wooden buildings were perforated like the top of a pepper-box with Indian bullets. The gar- rison were worn and emaciatedghastly, reek- ing corpses, mangled, distorted, lay around on the prairies, already blackening with the touches of decay, making the air noisome with their vapors, or torn and fed on by hogs and prairie foxes. To bury these, and ascertain if possible the direction in which the Indians had gone, a detachment, consisting of Captain Grants in- fantry and Captain Andersons cavalry com- panies, were sent forward on Sunday morning, August 31, toward the Lower Agency. Through that day and the ensuing Monday they hurled upward of two hundred bodies in every conceiva- ble state of mutilation, including several of the heroes of Captain Marshs company; but the body of the gallant leader himself they did not find. That night they encamped at Birch Cooley, on the very plat in the angle of the ravine that has already been described. They pitched their tents, and around them kraaled the cavalry horses and the few baggage-wagonsbrought in sufficient wood to feed the camp firesate from their knapsacks their rations of hard bread and bacon, and talking over the scenes they had that day witnessed, settled gradually into the stillness of the night As the glimmerings of the morn- ing began to flicker along the rim of the horiaon, just as the officer of the guard was completing his round with a new relief, the sentinel, sta- tioned on the side facing toward the ravine, saw faintly in the distance, by the waving furrows of the tall grass, objects moving stealthily along in zigzag lines. At first he supposed them mere- ly cattle, but for greater assurance called back the officer and pointed them out to him. They both had but turned to look again when deafen- ing war-whoops from all around rent the air, and the very next instant a raking cross-fire poured in upon them. Most of the guard fell where they stood; the tents were riddled with holes; some sleeping in them received their death-shots before they had time to awake; ninety-one horses pierced with bullets lay in death-agonies on the ground: all this in less time than you can think it over. For a mo- ment the camp was thrown into utter confu- sion: if the Indians had then made a charge upon it, not one would have escaped to tell its VOL. XXVII.No. 157.B story. But the panic was only for a moment. Crawling out of the tents on hands and knees, clutching their rifles, even the wounded ar- ranged themselves at the word of command along the edges, behind the prostrate bodies of horses, wagons, or whatever else would answer for a temporary barricade, two by twoone loading as he lay, then rising on one knee, or ~nfficient to take aim, firing and falling again to load, and the other, as he lay flat on his face, digging a trench with the point of his bayonet, and throwing off the loose earth with a tin cup. Bullets whistled and glanced around, above, and acrossa shower of lead. All that day, with- out intermission till night closed upon them, they fought; but the greatest harm was inflicted at the first attack. More were killed and wound- ed at that moment than throughout all the rest of the day. But even to the very last the bullets told upon our men. Many a one lay soaking with his blood the soil of the trench he had dug with his bayonet and tin cup. With yells and war-whoops the savages continued the attack till night. Early in the forenoon the pickets around Col- onel Sibleys camp at the fort heard the firing at Birch Cooley, twenty-four miles distant; but owing to the reverberation from the knolls and bluffs they could only guess at its precise direc- tion. Convinced, however, that Grants detach- ment had been attacked, Sibley sent to their as- sistance a small force comprising two companies, a 6-pound howitzer, and a few mounted men under Lieutenant-Colonel MPhail. After ~van- dering about till near noon, misled by the un- certain bearing of the reports, they marched to- ward Birch Cooley. As soon as the Indians, through scouts, heard of their approach they hastened to meet and annihilate this new party of white menleaving a sufficient number to sustain the battle around the camp, which they supposed to be nearly defenseless. But the after- noon was well-nigh gone; and that big gun made an open approach more dangerous than the attack upon Birch Cooley. They therefore concluded to satisfy themselves for that day with firing from a distance, sounding the war-whoop, and brandishing their hatchets and blankets, postponing the annihilation till the next day. The detachment seeing themselves still too few for the apparently fifteen hundred Indians that surrounded them, halted for the night where they were, and sent a messenger with the utmost speed to Colonel Sibley asking for still greater reinforcements. As soon as the messenger reached the fort, Colonel Sibley made instant preparations, and with the entire remaining part of his force took up the line of march early in the evening. He came up to the former rein. forcement about midnight; bivouacked with them till morning on the open prairie, and with the earliest day pressed on together with them to- ward Birch Cooley. As the sun commenced to gild the sky we saw Indians running about as if in confusion in the distance, on every side of us, though quite out of range. They had desisted 18 hARPERS NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE. from an attack the evening previous with the in- tention of commencing it early in the morning. They knew nothing of the reinforcements that had arrived at the still hour of midnight; and when they saw the line stretch itself over double the length it had the night previous, they could not account for its sudden growth. Oh! oh! they cried; there are five miles of white men coming. Only enough staid round Birch Cooley to keep up a harassing fire. The rest stood in groups at a safe distance from our guns, shaking their blankets, and flashing hack upon us the rays of the sun from their burnished weapons, and the little looking-glasses which they wore as ornaments; or ran about sounding the war- whoop, and firing at us. We were as yet un- certain as to the exact direction of Grants de- tachment; we, however, advanced in battle line, answering the fire of the Indians as we went, though, from the distance, with hut little effect. We soon came in sight of a group of conical tents across the ravine. At first they were sup- posed to be the Indian camp, and that we might capture them before they could he removed we hastily crossed over. But coming in full sight of them we saw not the Indian camp as expect- ed, but that of Grant, though apparently with- out a living soul in it. Only slaughtered horses, dead men, and bare tents were visible; but as we neared the men arose from the trenches as from their graves. Some clapped their hands, laughed, and danced around with delight; oth- ers were mute with gratitude; for had not rein- forcements arrived that very day before night they would have been overpowered and every one tomahawked. The want of water alone would soon have made them powerless. After the first few moments of meeting and congratu- lation were over, we commenced administering to the sixty wounded as best we could; buried the dead in thirteen graves, side by side, thotigh the Indians after we were gone exhumed and mutilated the bodies. Having rested and eat- enfor all, especially the almost starved heroes of Birch Cooley, were in great need of rest and food we placed the wounded in wagons, on heaps of grass pulled from the prairie, struck the tents, and taking them and whatever else was worth saving, commenced our march back to the fort. Starting just before sunset, we reached the fort at about midnight. Having supposed that nearly all the white men were away from the country at war, the Indians were greatly surprised when, the even- ing before the battle, they saw the force en- camped at Birch Cooley. Still more amazed were they on Wednesday morning when they saw Colonel Sibleys force stretch its length along the prairie. It was the first effective check they had received; for though they had suffered com- parati~ely little from the battle itself, yet by the display of that five miles of white men their courage was damped, and their faith in ultimate success greatly shaken. Hastily they collected together at Yellow Medicine, bringing their fain- ilies and their teepees, their plunder, and pris- o~ers. Having assembled a meeting of the sol- diers lodge, they determined to send to us an embassy. Accordingly about Sabbath noon, September 7, two half-breeds with a flag of truce rode into our camp in a buggy drawn by one of the very Government mules taken from .tl~ fort stables not fifty rods distant. Being led to head-quar- ters between a guard they presented to Colonel Sibley a note from Little Crow, signed with his mark, in which he said the braves were tired of the war, and wanted to make peace; that they had been driven into it by the fraud and duplic- ity of the traders, who had robbed them of nearly all they had and left them in a starving condition; that they had many prisoners, wo- men and children, and wanted to know on what terms they could make peace. Colonel Sibley sent word back to him to send in the prisoners at once, and then he would talk to him like a man. But that was not in accordance with Little Crows ideas of the matter, and so the prisoners came not. Several, however, escaping. through the assistance of the Mission Indians, managed to reach us by one means or another. Loreuzo Lawrence, who, as has been said, had with Chaska helped away Dr. Williamson, now again did a. heroic deed by rescuing seven- teen others. The Indians were about breaking up their camp to move. still farther off to Red Irons village, when Lawrence, taking advantage of it, at midnight led through the bushes to the river side Mrs. De Camp and her children, and together with his own family escaped with them down the river in four canoes which he had pre- viously collected. On the way, likewise escap- ing among the bushes, almost starved, torn with briers and worn with fatigue, he found Mrs. Robideaux and her children, and taking them also on board reached us at the fort in safety with his precious charge. Simon, another of the Mission Indians, also effected the escape of severul other women and children. Our soldiers were impatient to press on in pursuit of the Red Devils. Colonel Sibley was charged with negligence and remissness, if not something worse, for not following up the victory at Birch Cooley. This charge was made, not only by the people and the press, but also by his own men and officers. But let us consider the circumstances of the case. The force he had with him consisted mainly of undisciplined re- cruits enlisted to go South, just before the out- break, with the promise of being dismissed for a fortnight to settle up their business as soon as mustered in; in place of which, however, be- fore they had time to be supplied with uniforms, accoutrements, or arms, it became necessary to send them with utmost haste to stay the Indian massacre. Supplies and arms were sent on after them as rapidly as they could be collected to- gether; but the provisioning and equipment of three thousand men is not the work of a day. Had he by any means crippled this column or lessened its importance in the eyes of the Indians, THE INDIAN MASSACRES AND WAR OF 1862. the only barrier being washed away, the country below would have been deluged with a flood such as swept over the Lower Agency and around. Besides, in the clutches of those savages were over a hundred and fifty women and children. To rescue those there was not a man among us hut would have faced any danger; but courage alone was insufficient. The Indians had them, and held them for some specific end. If we had made an attack upon and driven them, before they deserted their camp it was their intention to tomahawk every captive they bad. This was not considered by those who were impatient with Sihleys seemingly dilatory movements. But subsequent events proved conclusively that he acted wisely as well as conscientiously in brav- ing these censures and carrying out his own plans. As soon, however, as we were supplied with bread and bullets for ten days in advance the Colonel issued marching orders. On the 18th of September, having crossed the river opposite the fort, we pushed on through the ruin and des- olation, and on the evening of the 22d reached Wood Lake, within sight of the blackened walls of the Yellow Medicine Agency buildings. The Indians in advance of us had set several bridges on fire; but, hastily repairing them, we crossed over. They had, however, so completely de- stroyed one just this side of the Yellow Medicine Ravine that more time was required for its re- construction, and we were obliged to encamp next day by Wood Lake to rebuild it. Early in the morning of the 23d the pioneers were sent out to repair that hridge, hut had scarcely com- menced when they were fired upon, and two of them killed. Being but partially armed, they im- mediately commenced a retreat toward the camp; but before they reached it the prairie in that di- rection and partly around was teeming with In- (linus. From their hiding - places in the tall grass and hollows they suddenly arose, as if sprung from the gronnd. The troops were quickly drawn into line, and marching hither and thither at the word of command, were de- ployed along in broken ranks to fight each for himself in Indian style, and before one was fairly aware of it we were engaged in a battle. The Indians firing at us lay in every direc- tion, with tufts of grass tied around their heads and waists to disguise their position, or ran along in zigzag lines, or galloped about on their ponies, pouring into our midst a hail-storm of hullets, that pierced our tents, plowed up the ground around us, and whizzed about our ears like mosquitoes on a summer evening. The battle raged till near noon, when the Indians congregating in considerable numhers in a ra- vine on our right, Lieutenant-Colonel Marshal was ordered to charge on them with the Sev- enth Regiment Gallantly, on horseback, though amidst a pelting storm of bullets, he led the charge, routed them, drove them in confusion before him, and gained one of the most complete victories ever achieved in Indian warfare. If there had then been a body of cavalry to follow 19 them up, the whole hand might have been de- stroyed or taken; but with infantry alone which was all we hadpursuit was wholly fu- tile. Nearly naked as they were, with but their guns and powder-flasks, the Indians easily dis- tanced us. But the back of the outbreak was broken; Little Crow lost nearly all his influ- ence, and the braves turned their attention to how they might secure their own safety, wheth- er by flight or otherwise. The greater part of them, together with Little Crow himself, barely staying to take their fam- ilies, fled to Dahkotah Territory, and there sep-. arated in different directions; while a remain- ing part, together with the Mission Indians who had heen trying to bring about such a result, separated themselves from the rest, and, taking the captives nuder their immediate protectiou, sent word to Colonel Sibley, under a flag of truce, to come on and take them as soon as pos- sible, for fear they might he attacked again by Little Crow and his party. In factwhether for appearance, to carry out the end some of them had of thus working into pardon and favor, or from real apprehension they fortified their camp that night with trenches. Leaving Wood Lake we advanced, ~with~skir- mishers deployed on either side of us and in front to guard against a surprise. We expected, espe- cially on entering the Yellow Medicine Ravine, to he again attacked; for no place was ever bet- ter adapted by nature for an ambuscade. They could have attacked us from the edge, and then retreated back, without being seen, as we enter- ed, down the declivity of the bluff, through the thickets and woods, across the stream, success- ively firing into us, and finally escaped up the farther side with scarce a scratch from us in re aIEUTENKNT-cOaonEa W. R. ~1AR5aAL. 20 HARPERS NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE. turn. But we were not molested; though it had been their intention to have made the at- tack at this place instead of at Wood Lake. But their movements were precipitated by a few of their young men firing into the pioneers. Thus their position was revealed; and as they had commenced they had no alternative but to carry it through then and there. Had they, accord- ing to their intention, waited till we were cross- ing, they would at the least have greatly crippled us. The next day, the 26th, about noon, we came in sight of the Indian camp. As we neared it a flag of truce approached us, consisting of a hed- sheet which they had stolen, tied to the end of a pole, and carried along by a man on an Indian pony. Almost every teepee was also surmount- ed with a white flag. Along the edges of the camp a motley crowd of Indians, squaws, and children stood gazing at the strange display. The column was marched partly around them, and encamped on their right, near the river. Some whose families were held captive were permitted immediately to go over; and soon after Colonel Sibley and his staW escorted hy a body-guard, went to take formal possession of the Indian camp. The painted bucks their hands still reeking with the blood they had shed clustered around with abundant professions of friendship and amity, shaking violently by the hand every one of us they could get a chance at, and obsequiously grinning and gri- macing in token of the great love they bore us proof of which only two days previous they had given at Wood Lake. Colonel Sibley told them, in substance, that those that were inno- cent had nothing to fear; but the guilty would all be punished, for even should they escape him they would certainly be taken by other parties out in quest of them; and as he had come into their camp mainly for that object, he demanded of them the immediate rendition of all the cap- tives they had. In reply several of them made speeches in Dahkotah, which were duly trans- lated by Mr. Riggs. Gesticulating in the wild- est manneryou could almost have understood them by their motions alonethey protested their innocence, their friendship to the whites, and the efforts they had made to prevent those that had gone with Little Crow from doing what they had done, in which they themselves had taken no part. A few among themas the Mission and some of the Farmer Indianswere indeed innocent, and had even themselves suf- fered a degree of persecution for not having as- sisted in the outbreak. Soon after, from the teepees, they led out to us the captives. It was a joyful meeting. We brought them into our camp, and did all that was in the power of each to make them com- fortable; for every heart was moved at the recit- al of what they had suffered, over which for the present, however, let us drop a veiL We were jubilant over the rescue; for a hundred amid fifty helpless women and children had been snatched from the jaws of an earthly hell. We had, however, but little for them to eat, as al- ready the rations with which we left the fort had been stretched over five days beyond their in- tended time. As soon as circumstances would permit they were sent below to places of greater comfort. A detailed company or two cut logs from the woods by the river and put up in the middle of our campCamp Releasea log jail or rather pen, about ten feet high, covered on the top with horizontal logs laid side by side, and bolted firm- ly together. When this was finished, Colonel Crooks was dispatched by night with an ade- quate force. Under the veil of darkness he si- lently surrounded the Indian camp, closed in upon it, and took all the men prisoners, except those who were absolutely free from suspicion, brought them in, and shut them up under a guard in that jail. Chains were then forged upon their ankles. Side by side the right foot of one was fastened to the left of another. A mili- tary commission was then convened for their trial. Burial-parties were sent out to inter the remnants of still unburied corpses. Companies INDIAN CAMP TAKEN MY COLONEL SLI3LEm. THE INDIAN MASSACRES AND WAR OF 1862. 21 and squads were dispatched in difierent direc- Seen the Indian campnow containing few tions on foraging or exploring expeditions. men, bat mostly squaws and children was Some returned with stories of thrilling adven- moved under a guard, first to Yellow Medicine, tures, hair-breadth escapes, or important inform- and thence with others there added, to Red ation; others with potatoes and cabbages. Wood, the Lower Agency, and nItim~te1y to IRAIRIE O~S FIRE. CAMP aaa ASS. 22 HARPERS NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE. Fort Snelling. Lieutenant-Colonel Marshal, with a detachment of two hundred men, was sent on farther into Dahkotah Territory. The prairie grass, now rendered dry and brittle by the frost, commenced to burn, filling the air with smoke so as at thues, in broad day, com- pletely to veil the sun from sight, or give it the appearance of a blood-red full moon, and pre- senting in the night a gorgeous view, surpass- ing all the fire-works of art. Cloud after cloud of spark-speckled smoke rolled up in volumes over each other; streaks, and streams, and lakes of red flames crackled over the grass and among and through the bushes; or, leaping with the wind as it lapped its length ahead, swept the prairie crop and left behind it a blackened plain. Colonel Marshal crossed the Little Sioux and advanced a distance on the Cotean des Prairies an elevated, undulating, sterile table-land, full two thousand feet above the level of the sea presenting from the distance, as you approach it, the appearance of an unbroken mountain range, but gradually sloping up toward it. He ad- vanced in the direction of the James River. fleing informed that by Wild-Goose-Nest Lake was encamped a part of Little Crows band, which had for the most part dispersed, stealth- ily by night he surrounded them, and in the early morning captured the whole camp. The braves attempted to run, but finding them- selves completely hemmed in, with Indian indif- ference surrendered. The squaws rather took it to hearttore their hair, pounded their breasts, screamed, and throwing themselves on the ground, kicked in a most unladylike manner. On the 21st of October a perfect simoon swept the prairiesdust and cinders darkened the atmosphere. The wind bent, broke, and uprooted trees on the river sides; blew down tents upon our heads, and sent us around like a brood of chickens in a rain-storm; took up bar- rels and sent them from one end of the camp to the other. Through this stormhis men liter- ally black with ashes and dustColonel Marshal with his prize arrived back at Camp Release. The Indian men were imprisoned with the others in the jail; the squaws and children were sent on with those previously taken. Other captures at Lac Qni Parle, Yellow Medicine, and elsewhere, by parties sent out for the purpose, also were made at different times, and the prizes taken similarly disposed of. While at this camp Col- onel Sibley was promoted to a Brigadier-General- ship. The weather began to grow colder. The frosts and prairie fires having swept away nearly all the forage, provender for the horses and cattle grew scarce. So on the 23d of October, having loaded the Indian prisoners, chained as they were, from twelve to fifteen in a wagon, the tents were struck and the expedition commenced a return march. A few weeks were spent at the Lower Agency, in Camp Sibley. The prisoners were incarcerated, as at Camp Release, in a jail built for the occasion. The Military Commis- sion held its session in a small log-house, spared from the Indian torch by accident, and there continued the trial of the four hundred prisoners we then had, not including those sent to Fort Snelling. This accomplished, we again resumed Wian- OOSE-NEST aAaz. THE INDIAN MASSACRES AND WAR OF 1862. 23 the line of march toward Mankato, passing on our way by New Uhn. On the advance of a military forcethe im- mediate danger being supposed overmost of the inhabitants that had fled, after the attack, had returned to their homes. Without doubt they had suffered provocation of the utmost de- gree in the loss of their property and the massa- cre of their friends and relations; but still the demonstration they made as we passed New Ulm, on Sabbath morning, was hardly to their credit. As the command passed the village the entire populationmen, women, and childrenarmed with pitch-forks, rakes, hoes, sticks, stones, brick- bats, knives, an~d guns, sallied out and attacked the prison wagons. They were perfectly furi- ous, the women danced about with aprons full of stones, and begged, Oh, for just one chance at those devils I Some of them rushed up to the wagons and discharged their missiles. One woman pounded a chained Indian on the head till he fell backward out of the wagon. I regret to give such items, but I do so that a distinct line may be drawn between the condign punish- ment those Indians deserved and such revenge. A number of the men were put under arrest and the mob soon dispersed. Crossing the Big Cottonwood River, we marched on and pitched our tents within a couple of miles of Mankato, on the bank of the Blue Earth River, in Camp Lincoln. The Mili- tary Commission, that had completed its trials at the Lower Agency, had condemned 303 of the Indians to be hung, and 18 to be imprisoned for life. These decisions, with detailed accounts of the trials, were sent on to Washington to be rati- fied by the President. In the mean time they were left in jail, squatted side by side, smoking their kinickinick pipes. Another mob again at- tacked the jail, but were dispersed by the prompt, decided action of Colonel Miller, who was then, from the absence of General Sibley, in command of the camp. On the receipt of returns from Washington, ratifying for that time at least the sentence of only thirty-eight of the condemned, immediate prep- arations were made for the execution. Not far TILE ATTACK AT NEW CaM. IaTEs~1oR OF INDIAN JAIL. 24 HARPERS NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE. from the jail a scaffold was built, so constructed that the entire platform on which the condemn- ed were to stand, each directly under his own halter, could he instantly dropped and the hod ies left hanging in the air. With their charac- teristic indifferenceit can scarcely he called stoicismthe Indians received their sentence and soon commenced a war dance with as much freedom as their chains would permit. The execution was appointed for Friday the 26th of December. An immense crowd of men, woman, and children assemhled from all the country round to see the spectacle. The scaf- fold was encircled by soldiers, through a double file of whom the victims were condncted. Their hands were tied, their heads covered with mus- lin caps; otherwise they were dressed in their native costume. Chanting their wailing dcath- song, they mounted the platform. The noose was adjusted to the neck of each; and at a sig- nal the one rope which held the platform was severed; the platform fell; and the doomed eight-and-thirty, clasped hand in hand, were launched into eternity. After a proper inter- val the bodies were cut down, carried away, and buried, in two rows, foot to foot, in a wide ditch among the willows on a sand-har hy the river- side. The other prisoners were kept in confine- ment to await their doom, whatever it might be. A force sufficient to protect them from violence was left with them. The remaining troops were stationed in winter-quarters at all the endanger- ed points along the entire frontier. So also, in a degree at least, was it several years ago after the Spirit Lake massacre. A few were partially if at all punished, and the rest turned at large again with impunity. And so, of course, even at the very worst, the Indians an- ticipated nothing more after their late raid, Let the guilty now, as hefore, again go unpun- ished, and in a few years our remissness wik have to answer for another onthreak. Permiz traders and lawless men again to roh and op- press them till their savage blood boils, and again our own will soak the frontier soil. Jus- tice and protection from wrongs and rohhery, as well as punishment for theft and murder, are due to an Indian as well as to a white man. Teach them habits of civilization, not hy pampering them in idleness and smoothing them over with promises of annuities, but by placing them in circumstances requiring them to work. Give them justice and equity, laws and a government to restrain and protect them, and another inns- sacre will never again blot their history. Thus I have given an account of the late Sioux massacre and war in as hrief a compass as possi- ble. I have had to compress it greatly to bring P within the limits of a magazine article. Of itemsl have given but enough to show the general char- acter of the whole; I found it difficult to seleer from such a mass, seemingly all of equal interest. I have given nothing hut what I saw myself, or received from those who saw it. I would gladly tender my thanks to Albert Colegrave, of Sr. Paul, now in Company G of the Sixth Regiment Minnesota Volunteers, for valuable assistance in preparing the sketches for this article; to Rev. Alfred L. Riggs for the Dahkotah tunes; to Mr. J. E. Whitney, also of St. Paul, for the portrait of Little Crow; and to other friends for assist- ance in collecting materials. CA~ r laNeoLa. THE QUICKSILVER MINES OF NEW ALMADEN. 25 THE QUICKSILVER MINES OF NEW ALMADEN, CALIFORNIA. [THE recent decision of the United States Court, which upparently settles the question of property in the New Xlmaden Quicksilver Mines, causes us to produce the following paper, describing a visit made to these Mines in 1851. The illustrations and descriptions are given with- out change. They represent the region as it was six years ago. Those who are now familiar with it will be able to note the changes which these few years have made in the aspect of life in the Golden State.Enivoss OF He.maas M& oAznoz.] ON a sunny morning in May, the most charming season of the year in California, in the mountains as well as on the sea-coast, we looked out from the door of the Oakland House, in the village of that name, and gave the final directions to the brisk little hostler of the hotel as to the saddling of the horses for our contem- plated jaunt. To go back & moment and ex- plain this rather abrupt jatroduction: Know, good reader, that Oakland is a rural village em- bowered in the only trees deserving the name of woods within many miles of San Francisco, and situated opposite that city, on the eastern shore of the bay. It has been called the Hoboken of San Francisco. An hourly ferry is estab- lished between the two places. Wrought into desperation by the distant prospect of green fields and flowery hill.sides, and weary of San Fran- ciscos dust-pelted streets, we had taken our horses across in the ferry the evening previous, and were now bound on an equestrian trip in search of novelties and adventures. The whole of California was at our disposal for an exploring expedition; but out of the sev- eral interesting localities it was difficult to choose. There was Monte IDiablo, with its wild and sublime scenery; Martinez, on the Straits of Carqninez; San Pablo, where might be seen the original primitive California style of living illustrated by the descendants of the old Spanish families; the wheat-growing locality of the Mission of San Jossi, with its quaint old Catholic church, orchards, and hot - springs; and, lastly, the famous New Almaden Quick- silver Mine, beyond San Jossi, of which we had heard accounts almost as fabulous as those re- lating to the gold mines. Well toss up, exclaimed F , ~between Martinez and the quicksilver mine ! No sooner said than done. The mine had it; and settling our score with the landlord of our red-wood hotel, we mounted and cantered away toward the base of the Contra Costa range, which rises abruptly from the extensive plains bordering the bay to the eastward. Once clear of the little town we wheeled our horses to the southward, and having a distance of thirty-five miles to perform to the time-hon- ored Mission of San Jossi, through which we must pass, we pushed forward at a rapid pace. Our horses vied with ourselves in spirits, and as they snuffed the fresh morning air, and sprang along through the great expanse of clover and flowers, they seemed to enjoy the wild free- dom of the thing as much as ourselves. In many places such was the luxuriant growth that, despite our leathern leggins and the cov- erings always attached to the California stirrups, we were quickly wet with the morning dew, which sprinkled in little showers as we galloped a path through the tall mustard and grass. To the right lay the Bay of San Francisco, still shrouded in a veil of mist, which the early land-breeze was driving into fantastic forms, re- vealing here and there a whiter figure as some boat, laden with produce from the farms above, drifted with the ebb-tide toward San Francisco. The savannas of Contra Costa spread away to the left, intersected with tiny streams flowing toward the bay, their courses marked by a few scattered trees. From Oakland, through the entire valleyhounded by the bay on the one hand, and the hills on the otherthis plain ex- tends to San Jossi, and forms one of the most valuable agricultural districts of the State. Toward evening we pulled up at the Mission of San Jossi, where we passed the night; and on the following morning, leaving its venerable church to the left, we pursued our way to the southward, and a few hours ride brought us to the pueblo of San Jossi, once the capital, and still the principal agricultural dsip6t of Califor- nia. It is situated thirteen miles south of the head of San Francisco Bay, near the middle of the beautiful valley of Santa Clara, which at this point has a width of eighteen miles. The general course of this valley is nearly parallel to the Pacific coast, from which it is separated by the Santa Cruz mountains, while another range (the Contra Costa mountains) forms its north- eastern boundary, and divides it from the valley of San Joaquin. The town communicates with the bay through a little embarcadero, or port, called Alviso, standing at the head-waters of a creek flowing from the southward. San Jossi, in many respects, is the most interesting town in California, being supported entirely by the products of the surrounding agricultural region, and appropriately styled the farming head- quarters of the State. It is steadily increasing in population. Society in San Jossi is decidedly Pike in its character, but there are many faux- ilies of refinement and education residing there. Here is the celebrated Catholic Female Semina- ry, the oldest and wealthiest educational insti- tution in the State; and among the buildings are the court-house, several churches, and hotels, very New England in their appearance, and a great number of handsome private residences. The following engraving gives but one half the town, there being no point from the plain which will include a view of the whole. San Jossi differs from most of the towns to- ward the ocean in being nearly embowered in the deepest and greenest foliage, and laid out into spacious fruit and flower gardens. In fact, it approaches nearer to an old-fashioned Eastern

THE QUICKSILVER MINES OF NEW ALMADEN. 25 THE QUICKSILVER MINES OF NEW ALMADEN, CALIFORNIA. [THE recent decision of the United States Court, which upparently settles the question of property in the New Xlmaden Quicksilver Mines, causes us to produce the following paper, describing a visit made to these Mines in 1851. The illustrations and descriptions are given with- out change. They represent the region as it was six years ago. Those who are now familiar with it will be able to note the changes which these few years have made in the aspect of life in the Golden State.Enivoss OF He.maas M& oAznoz.] ON a sunny morning in May, the most charming season of the year in California, in the mountains as well as on the sea-coast, we looked out from the door of the Oakland House, in the village of that name, and gave the final directions to the brisk little hostler of the hotel as to the saddling of the horses for our contem- plated jaunt. To go back & moment and ex- plain this rather abrupt jatroduction: Know, good reader, that Oakland is a rural village em- bowered in the only trees deserving the name of woods within many miles of San Francisco, and situated opposite that city, on the eastern shore of the bay. It has been called the Hoboken of San Francisco. An hourly ferry is estab- lished between the two places. Wrought into desperation by the distant prospect of green fields and flowery hill.sides, and weary of San Fran- ciscos dust-pelted streets, we had taken our horses across in the ferry the evening previous, and were now bound on an equestrian trip in search of novelties and adventures. The whole of California was at our disposal for an exploring expedition; but out of the sev- eral interesting localities it was difficult to choose. There was Monte IDiablo, with its wild and sublime scenery; Martinez, on the Straits of Carqninez; San Pablo, where might be seen the original primitive California style of living illustrated by the descendants of the old Spanish families; the wheat-growing locality of the Mission of San Jossi, with its quaint old Catholic church, orchards, and hot - springs; and, lastly, the famous New Almaden Quick- silver Mine, beyond San Jossi, of which we had heard accounts almost as fabulous as those re- lating to the gold mines. Well toss up, exclaimed F , ~between Martinez and the quicksilver mine ! No sooner said than done. The mine had it; and settling our score with the landlord of our red-wood hotel, we mounted and cantered away toward the base of the Contra Costa range, which rises abruptly from the extensive plains bordering the bay to the eastward. Once clear of the little town we wheeled our horses to the southward, and having a distance of thirty-five miles to perform to the time-hon- ored Mission of San Jossi, through which we must pass, we pushed forward at a rapid pace. Our horses vied with ourselves in spirits, and as they snuffed the fresh morning air, and sprang along through the great expanse of clover and flowers, they seemed to enjoy the wild free- dom of the thing as much as ourselves. In many places such was the luxuriant growth that, despite our leathern leggins and the cov- erings always attached to the California stirrups, we were quickly wet with the morning dew, which sprinkled in little showers as we galloped a path through the tall mustard and grass. To the right lay the Bay of San Francisco, still shrouded in a veil of mist, which the early land-breeze was driving into fantastic forms, re- vealing here and there a whiter figure as some boat, laden with produce from the farms above, drifted with the ebb-tide toward San Francisco. The savannas of Contra Costa spread away to the left, intersected with tiny streams flowing toward the bay, their courses marked by a few scattered trees. From Oakland, through the entire valleyhounded by the bay on the one hand, and the hills on the otherthis plain ex- tends to San Jossi, and forms one of the most valuable agricultural districts of the State. Toward evening we pulled up at the Mission of San Jossi, where we passed the night; and on the following morning, leaving its venerable church to the left, we pursued our way to the southward, and a few hours ride brought us to the pueblo of San Jossi, once the capital, and still the principal agricultural dsip6t of Califor- nia. It is situated thirteen miles south of the head of San Francisco Bay, near the middle of the beautiful valley of Santa Clara, which at this point has a width of eighteen miles. The general course of this valley is nearly parallel to the Pacific coast, from which it is separated by the Santa Cruz mountains, while another range (the Contra Costa mountains) forms its north- eastern boundary, and divides it from the valley of San Joaquin. The town communicates with the bay through a little embarcadero, or port, called Alviso, standing at the head-waters of a creek flowing from the southward. San Jossi, in many respects, is the most interesting town in California, being supported entirely by the products of the surrounding agricultural region, and appropriately styled the farming head- quarters of the State. It is steadily increasing in population. Society in San Jossi is decidedly Pike in its character, but there are many faux- ilies of refinement and education residing there. Here is the celebrated Catholic Female Semina- ry, the oldest and wealthiest educational insti- tution in the State; and among the buildings are the court-house, several churches, and hotels, very New England in their appearance, and a great number of handsome private residences. The following engraving gives but one half the town, there being no point from the plain which will include a view of the whole. San Jossi differs from most of the towns to- ward the ocean in being nearly embowered in the deepest and greenest foliage, and laid out into spacious fruit and flower gardens. In fact, it approaches nearer to an old-fashioned Eastern 26 HARPERS NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE. l~j If, 0 THE QUICKSILVER MINES OF NEW ALMADEN. 27 country town than perhaps any other in Call- ing equally distant hetween the mine and San forum. Jos~. Here a sturdy Western farmer has lo- Before leaving the town for the quicksilver cated himself for life. The farm produces a mine we rode over to the old Mission of Santa sufficient supply of butter, cheese, eggs, milk, Clara. The road lies through the Alameda, a and every other country luxury to supply his beautiful avenue of willows planted by the padres, own wants, and to send to the markets of San and which have now reached their full growth, Jos~ and San Francisco enough to meet the ex- and meet overhead, forming in the spring-time penses of the estate. Add to this a climate fa- ~ continuous bower, shady as a forest, and a fa- mous for its mildness and salubrity even in Cal- vorite drive for the fast boys csf San J05~. The ifornia, and our jolly proprietor has little to wish Mission Church is still standing, in good repair, for in this worldat least so it would appear and there on Sunday may be seen the native from his contented looks and the hearty dairy- population, arrayed in their best, kneeling be- maid healthfulness of the daughters. But this fore the altar, and listening to the monotonous is no isolated instance. This whole valley is recitations of the priest. The church ornaments occupied by comfortable farmers, who live more in the interior are similar to those of the other in the style of the dairymen of the Genesee Missions. The rude carving, quniirt figures of Valley in New York than pioneer settlers on the saints, and paintings of the Crucifixion, and oth- verge of civilization. er Scriptural subjects, are the same that were The ascent to the range of mountains, on the placed there nearly a century ago. Nothing slope of which the mine is situated, is very grad- indicates the wonderful change which the outer nalscarcely perceptible. The first indication world has undergone. of ones proximity to it is a small village, or From San Josd to the quicksilver mine of collection of tasteful cottages, neatly painted New Almaden is twelve miles. The road winds and inclosed by paling fences, with here and for that distance through the most fertile part there the evidences of womans industrious hand of the valley of Santa Clara, which gradually in the cultivation of flower-gardens and the fan- widens into a verdant plain, richly carpeted cy trellis-work for woodbine and honey-suckle with wild flowers, and every foot of it claim- vines which clamber luxuriantly over some of ed, fenced, and settled upon by those who have the dwellings. The families of the superin- come to California not to make a pile and tendents of the works reside here, and live in return, but to build up and improve a home. the enjoyment of rural life, while the constant Among the prettiest of the many rural nooks arrivals of visitors from San Francisco at this opening to view at every turn in the road is a romantic spot keeps them posted in relation little velvety valley, in which is situated the to city affairs and the minutin of more fashion *ell-known Half-way house, so called from be- able life. 5AKTA OLABA. 28 HARPERS NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE. Beyond appear the brick buildings of the borhood, when questioned concerning it, replied, works. These consist of the business offices with the usual shrug, and Quinn sebe f Son of the directors, the residences of the workmen, cosas mug antiguos, until the ddbris was clear- storehouses for flasks and general material for ed away from the lower part of the shaft; in repairs and additions, and houses for the recep- doing which a number of skeletons, a quantity tion of ore and bricks. Together they form a of rounded stones from the brook, and other in- collection of solid and substantial houses, appa- teresting relics were disclosed. These, it was ready huilt for a centurys use. Here also are evident, were the remains of aborigines, who the furnaces in which the ore is smelted. had resorted here to obtain the cinnahar from The process of extracting the quicksilver is which to manufacture vermilion for ornament- an interesting study; and as our conductor al purposes, according to their savage customs. promised an explanation of its mysteries on our This was the only place where this primitive return, we accepted his offer to visit the mine paint could be obtained on the coast; and it is with us. The discovery and subsequent history now ascertained that savages visited it even of the New Almaden is briefly told. Some from the confines of Oregon, a distance of 5ev- years hefore the gold discovery an opening was cml hundred miles. Ignorant of the art of observed in the hill-side, into which the main propping up their drifts as they each year work- shaft has been since run. It had been repeat- ed farther into the earth, they had been sud- edly traced by the native Californians for fifty denly overtaken by a very natural catastrophe or a hundred feet, but nobody seems to have and were hurled alive in a grave of their own considered it any thing but a natural caveone digging, after which the tribes appear to have of the many crevices or caverns which have abandoned it. been formed in all parts of California by freaks Conjecture was for a long time at a loss Sc of nature. It was at last ascertained to be an know the object of the Indians in thus pene- artificial excavation, and one of great antiquity. tinting the mountain. On the discovery of the The vaqueros and taciturn old dons of the neigh- gold mines some experiments with rockers and TUE HALF-WAY HOUSE. THE QUICKSILVER MINES OF NEW ALMADEN. 29 pans are said to have been made in search of the precions metals, but of course without suc- cess, as the auriferous soil of California does not extend into the coast range. Bnt soon aft- er a gentleman, at present one of the principal proprietors in the quicksilver mine, in prosecut- ing the search for gold, first attempted to retort some of the ore, or what then appeared to be a species of red earth or ochre, when, standing over the crucible, he inhaled some of the mer- curial vapor, and shortly afterward began to experience symptoms of salivation. The re- sult of this dangerous but fortnnate experiment he commnnicated to his brother, one of a wealthy commercial firm in Mexico; and other tests yielding similar proofs of the richness of the ore, the land for a leagne or two was pur- chased at a very reasonable rate from its pro- a 0 a S prietor, who then held it under an original Span- ish grant. But merely buying the property was but a single step toward availing themselves of its val- ue. It soon became evident that a large capi- tal wonid he. xeqnired to erect works, or in any manner to develop the wealth with which nature appeared to have stored the hill. Several years passed without any vigorous measures having been taken: though all admitted the value of the property, none were willing to incur the ex- pense which seemed necessary to make it avail- able. In 1850 a company was formed, who have since conducted the operations of the mines. From the works to the mine the distance is a mile and a half. The road follows the base of the mountain, into which it is cut, winding ro- mantically up a gentle ascent. To the right 30 HARPERS NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE. the country opens to the westward through the depressions in the coast range, discovering pic- turesque views of the San Juan Valley gleam- ing in the sunlight through the interstices of the foliage, the landscape expanding with every step of ascent. This road must have been built at great cost, as it is handsomely graded and fin- ished, and, like every other part of this valua- ble property, intended for all time. From the inner side rises a solid wall of rock, of which the hill is formed, with here and there evidences of sandstone mb~ed with slate. On our way we met several wagons loaded with the dark red ore, which had been broken up into small pieces before being submitted to the works below. Five wagons are kept run- ning without intermission, and supply the ore, which at first employed trains of mules. At the summit we found a level space of ground, on which are situated the upper works, consist- ing of several buildings belonging to the compa- ny. This is known as the patio, or court-yard, and here ore is assorted and prepared for smelt- ing at the works below. The main entrance to the mine is a tunnel, commenced in 1850, in the side of the mount- ain, in a line with the patio, and which has al- ready been carried to the distance of 1800 feet. by 10 wide and 10 feet in height to the crown of the arch, which is strongly roofed with heavy timber throughout its entire length. Through this an iron rail track passes, the cars receiving the ore as it is brought upon the backs of car- riers (tanateros) from the excavations. These cars are calculated to carry about a ton each. and are pushed rapidly in and out by hand. We enter the car and in a few moments are rumbling along this under-ground railroad, with no sound to break the silence besides the heavy breathing of our human propellers, who, with swarthy visage lighted up by the dim rays of the candles, seem almost ghastly as they bend to their work. These laborers are all Mexicans. and have generally served a sort of apprentice- ship in the silver mines of Spanish America. Soon we reach the terminus of the railroad, and step out upon a damp soil beaten hard by the in- cessant tramp of the ore-carriers. Here the sensation of chilling dampness usually possess- ing the novice on entering a subterranean cay- eALaxarEs ANI) INCLINED SnArEs. THE QUICKSILVER MINES OF NEW ALMADEN. 31 era seizes one, and makes him for a moment doubt the prudence of the adventure; hut this gradually wears away, and a feeling of curiosity succeeds. With a stout Mexican to act the part of torch- bearer, we pass along a damp passage-way, through the arched roof of which the water trickles, and in the rainy months hangs in drops, glittering like gems in the light of the candles. We next pass down a perpendicular piece of ac- commodation, known among the miners as an escalera, or ladder, which consists of a notched stick of timher some twelve feet in length, an- swering to the common samson-post in a ships lower hatchway. This leads to a small landing-place, from which we gaze down into a black pit, the darkness made visible by the un- certain flicker of the candles. It is dainty treading along the little shelf, where a misstep would send you headlong into some unknown chasm, whose depth is indicated by the noises of the laborers far below, which ever and anon come faintly up. A short interval of groping, with the peculiar uncertain feeling of not know- ing whether the next step is likely to be upon solid ground or into emptiness, and we com- mence the descent of a flight of steps cut into the wall of rock, which leads into a still deeper cave. Here, feeling our way cautiously among loose stones and along craggy sides of the cave, we follow the glimmering candles, now down a slippery inclined plane, and again struggling up the precipitous base of some vein of cinnabar, which in its erratic course seems to have shot through the solid heart of the mountain, in much the zigzag course that a drop of quicksilver would describe in rolling about the surface of a plate. It is not until the lowest and inner excavations are reached that we realize the labvrinthine in- tricacies we have traversed. We are more than 200 feet below the patio and 600 below the sum- mit of the mountain. For many months after the working of the mine was commenced the proprietors labored under every difficulty; or, rather, a parsimoni- ous spirit and ignorance of the true method to be pursued prevented its development. The system adopted was so in accordance with the desultory style used in the gold mines of the interior, that at one time the under-ground workings, as shown by a map exhibiting the subterranean topography, had assumed the appearance of a gigantic rab- bit warren, extending in innumerable holes and crooked wiadings, like the streets of a city with- out system or economical order. A German over- seer, however, gradually put matters to rights. About 300 persons are employed in the mine. The work was formerly given out to them by empresarios or bosses, who took the job to de- liver at the mouth of the mine a certain number of tons of ore, and, of course, hired their work- men at the lowest possible wages. The laborers in the mine (barateros) are a distinct fraternity fromthe ore-carriers (tanateras). Each have their respective calling, and are not willing nor are they ever expected to assume each others places. The tanateros are most muscular and the best proportioned of all those engaged in the mine. Long practice has inured them to the labor, and a first-rate man will pack 200 pounds up the es- calaras without stopping to rest. This method of raising the ore is preferred to any machinery that has been suggested, as the men supply all that the works can distill, and the cost to the company is only in proportion to the amount furnished. A large sack or pannier of hide, open at the top, is slung to the back, and supported by a strap passing over the shoulders and around the forehead. The whole weight is thus sup- ported by the muscles of the neck, a method in which Spanish Americans seem to have great faith. Two hundred pounds being the average load, it becomes a matter of pride to preserve the phys- ical reputation. It is impossible to witness the straining nerves and quivering muscles of the carriers, as they pass slowly up from the depths below, without feeling that the heavy breathing and painful expression of face is produced by such labor as human beings can not long endure. Yet they seem cheerful, and as they deposit their burdens into the cars, light their cigarros, and join in the laugh produced by the jokes of some Joe Miller of the gang. Their dress is confined to a pair of pantaloons with the legs cut off above the knees, and a calico shirt, which is generally stowed away in some crevice until the dave work is over. A pair of leathern sandals fast- ened at the ankle is sometimes added to the cos- tume. Flight after flight up perpendicular steps these muscular fellows will ascend, winding through deep caverns, or threading passages of Egyptian darkness, or, as the openings often lead up in following the tortuous windings of the veins, they may be seen cautiously descending the notched logs toward the main entrance; yet it is affirmed that no accident has ever happened. Their course is dimly lighted by the candles placed in the niches of the walls. A single mis- step would dash the man and his load into the dismal abyss below; but by constant practice they attain to a wonderful degree of precision, and ascend and descend with all the certainty of mules scaling the rocky fastuesses of the South American sierras. An efficient tanatero will make from twenty to thirty trips a day. Grop- ing about the mine, and following the glimmer- ing light which barely illumines the way, we happen upon little groups of the barateros hard at work with crow-bars and picks breaking down the sterile rock. These fellows are, if possible, more scantily clad than their ore-carrying breth- ren. Some may be seen following the serpen- tine lead of a vein of cinnabar which has just been found to dip from the horizontal toward the base of the mountain. They have dug them- selves out of sight, and their half-smothered grunts and exclamations come curiously up from the cave whose length they are slowly extend- ing. A feeble light glimmers out of the excava tiona cave within a cave. A little farther, and we find a plank stretched across a narrow chasm 32 HARPERS NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE. upon which two or three swarthy broadchested miners are standing, drilling their way into the solid rock above them, where a rich lead has just been found. Long practice has taught them in running these shafts to leave immense stanchions of the ore and native rock as supports to the ceilings. Sometimes in the larger chambers where several galleries come to a point, the workmen keep a fire burning which illumines all the mines in the vicinity, and throws a dull, ruddy glare upon cv- ~ry thing for many yards around. Then the roof reveals its millions of lustrous crystallizations, sparkling in ruddy rhomboids and glittering like some magicians cavern of fairy romance. The effect is hei~hrcned by the Cimmerian darkness of the neighboring passages deserted for newly- discovered leads. The ore is the native red sulihuret of mercury, with a specific gravity varying from 6~7 to 82. It has a flat conchoidal fracture, is fine grained, opaque, and has generally a fine adamantine lustre, and a color varying frotri cochineal to :ulty red. There are also red oxyds of iron and silica. The ore averages thirty-six per cent.; a yield which might be considered fabulous but for the constant proofs and the facilities which any scientific person has for detecting an over- estimate. In the Ne~v Almaden mine the ore )ceurs in amorphous masses in l)ockets and ir- regular veins. Sometimes surrounded with a black clay, hut oftener incased in a hard sterile rock or chlorite slate, which it is generally nec- essary to blast to remove. The native cinnabar, or red suiphuret of mercury, as found in this as well as in most other mines, consists of two primes of sulphur =32240, combined with one of mercury ~2028133; or in 100 parts of 127 sul phur and 873 mercury. It is the most prolific ore of this metal, and is easily smelted by ex- posing a mixture of it with iron or lime to a red heat in retorts. Blasting has been used with great success. It is found to facilitate tlte labor of tite miners fifty per cent., and is attended with no danger none of the explosive gases which produced Sir Humphrey Davys safety - lamp being known. But few who have ever witnessed a heavy blast will forget the effect, especially when scen for the first time. After tlte charge is placed every body retires and awaits the resmilt from behind the supporting pillars of ore, or frotn some secure indentation in the cavern. For a while all is silent, and nothing is heard but tlte burning of the fuse. But immediately the cave lightens up with a lurid flame, shedding an in- tense glare upon the craggy walls. The mo- tiouless faces of the miners, the damp crystal- line sides of the mine, the distant and still dark- ened excavations, imtto whose tortuous windings the light has not fully penetrated, all appear and disappear in the twinkling of an eye, leaving tlte place by contrast itt inky blackness, while tlte report reverberates and bellows along the pas- sages followed by a shower of stones; for tlte blast does not merely open a ledge as in blowing granite, bttt sends innumerable splinters of rock and ore fat and near. Gradutmlly the accustomed higltt of the candles reveals the impression made, and the workmen return to their duties. No accidents have yet resulted from the use of gun- powder. When the smoke has ascended through the main entrance the splintered fragments are eel- ELASTINO IN TilE LOWER MINE. THE QUICKSILVER MINES OF NEW ALMADEN. 33 lected, and, if too large to be placed in the pan- cars and leveled as it was deposited, has gradu niers, or talegos, of the carriers, they are broken ally reacbed the extent of two acres. Upon into pieces with bars. this are erected the superintendents dwelling, It requires several hours to effect a complete mechanics shops, and sheds for assorting the 2xploration ot the mine. After a chat with one ore as it is dumped by the tanateros. ~r two of the most obliging of the workmen, and This space is surrounded by mountains cx- a complimentary obeisance to Our Lady of tending range upon ranae in every direction. Guadelupe, of whom we shall speak hereafter, Four hundred feet above is the old entrance, al- we ascend to the main shaft and emerge into ready referred to as the point where the abe- the light of day. rigines resorted for cinnabar. Here is another The large level space shown in the engraving, patio, but is now disused. A third entrance is upon which the buildings are erected, stands about to be made at a point much nearer the about a thousand feet ahove the lower works. base of the mountain in anticipation of required It is formed entirely of the refuse earth and drainage. rock from the mine which, brought out in the At the patio the principal part of the meeban- K 34 HARPERS NI~W MONTHLY MAGAZINE. ASSORTING THE ORE. ical labor of the works is performed. Here may man in the Tower of London puts yon through be seen actively employed blacksmiths, carpen- the curiosities. The constant inquiries made ters, bricklayers, weighers, sifters. The me- by visitors probably oblige those attached to the chanics, who are mostly Americans, receive full works to adopt a cert in routine of answers to city wagesfrom five to seven and the laborers save time. rom two to three dollars a day. These last are The space occupied by the hacienda is an fair specimens of the reckless, improvident Span- amphitheatre of some four acres, surrounded ish-American race. With them the only nse for with successive ranges of hills rolling np in the money is to get rid of it as quickly as possible. distance into monntains, known as the Santa It is of little consequence how much or little CruE Range, on the eastern slope of which the they receive. Monte and the other Games of inclosnre stands. Here is situated a hotel, new- ~~ards generally swallow np the weeks earn- ly erected by the company for the accommoda- ings. tion of visitors to the mine, and might he recoin- The ore is prepared at the patio for the works mended but for the outrageous prices demanded. below. The process is expeditious and simple. Competition is out of the question, as, owning A r heing deposited by the tanateros in the the land for lengues around and refusing to sell, cars it is bronght out on the railroad to the line no other can be built within some hours ride of of sheds designated in the engraving. Here it the general object of interest. The spot seems is deposited in heaps, and attacked by a gang of adapted by atnre for this purpose. From the assorters whose business it is to separate the tine porch a n~ttural lawn, terminating at the base of from the coarse ore. The latter is broken in the surrounding hills, which in all directions pieces suitable to the furnace, nd after being slope prettily away from the higher mountains cleared of all rock and earthy matter is to be beyond, all wearing the gay spring attire of carted below. The former, in the shape of sift- flowery California, and the ridges crested with ings, is converted into bricks or cakes, like the dark-green upland oak. Farther down ap- adobes, and after being thoroughly dried are de- pear groves of sycamore and buckeye, and in the posited in one of the store-houses at the lower lowest spots, where several spurs meeting have works. The less muscular of the workmen are formed natural reservoirs, the marshy soil sup- employed in assorting and sifting the ore, which is ports tangled copses of wild wood and the bright broken with mallets and hammers, and weighed foliage of the willow. Here one may gather, in as it is received. In the mine there are day and half an hours ramble, various specimens of wild night gangs constantly at work, though t un- floss, red and purple honey-suckles, creeping in broken darkness would never enable one to dis- endless vines among the rocks; the delicate pale tinguish when daylight ended or commenced. wild rose, which drops to pieces at the nicest at- More than seventy pounds of candles are burned tempt to pluck it; convolvuli, and a flower resem- every twenty-four hours. The operations at the bling the princes feather, to which no local patio thus require an additional number of work- name seems to have been assigned. Here, too, men during the day to keep pace with the night grows the sweet-scented laurel, whose leavee gang in the mine, when crushed emit an odor resembling dana- Leaving the patio we return by the road al- mon; and lastly, wild gooseberries, which may ready described to hacienda, or lower works, be gathered in any quantity from the innumer- where we find the obliging superintendent pre- able bushes forcing their way into light and air pared to answer our legion questions, and with from among the broken rocks. such unfailing alacrity and good-humor that one But our courteous conductor is now ready to suspects he has got the answers by heart, as the explain the operation of the hacienda, and we LYY7. /1 // ./ /1 1/ /1 fr 0 THE QUICKSILVER MINES OF NEW ALMADEN. 35 (II 36 HARPERS NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE. THE PATIO. follow him toward the collection of buildings, which are entirely of brick, made near the works. The uses of these has been already de~cribed. The principal one is that devoted to the smelt- in~, familiarly known as the works. The furnaces ate constructed on plans which have only been matured after several years of study; for after dispatching agents to the quicksilver mines of Almaden in Spain, for information on these matters, it was found that the modes pur- sued there were but continuations of the barbar- ous usages of three centuries ago. Finding that nothing was to be learned thence, Yankee skill was set at work to think out improvements. There are, as explained by Dr. Ure, three kinds of apparatus for the distillation of mercury: the furnace, called a galley; the furn~ ce with eledels, or cirthen pots, used in subliming any substance; and the large apparatus at Idria. The latter has been adopted as the model in the New Almaden. Entering the works, we find a row of sixteen furnaces ranged side by side, extending a dis- tance of several hundred feet. These stand un- der cover of roofs resembling those placed over a distillery, with blinds for the free escape of poisonous fumes. They stand some eight feet apart, and are forty feet in length, ten in height, and eight in breadth. The appearance of the building in which they are inclosed is shown in the engraving of the hacienda. The ore, after being thoroughly cleaned and broken to the required size, is wheeled in harrows from the pile where it is deposited, along the tops of the furnaces and turned into the recepta- cles, which are of uniform capacity and open at the tops. These will contain about 7 tons of ore each. After being filled, they are closed her- metically. As the ore becomes sublimated the vapors pass through a series of twelve compart- ments, entering the one nearest the fire from the top, the second from the bottom, and so altern- ating. In their passage through these compart- ments such of the vapors as become condensed flow in the form of quicksilver through numer- ous small holes into covered troughs, attached to the outside of the furnaces their entire length, through which the metal is conducted to an iron vat, the size of a half hogshead, sunk into the ground. This is the operation of one furnace. That of the others is in every respect the same. A high degree of heat is not required to smelt the ore, though 68O~ is necessary to convert the metal into a red oxyd. Such of the vapor as has not condensed in its passage through the partitions reaches a wooden condenser or reservoir of water, over the surface of which the exhalations puss, and by this con- trivance much of the metal not secured in its passage through the furnace-condensers is saved. Each of thefurnaces is provided with a large wood- en chimney forty feet in height, and from which there are constantly pouring clouds of arsenical vapors, though their quantity is greatly reduced by the precautions now used to prevent their es- cape; for independent of their deleterious effects, every atom of volatile matter thus dispersed con- tains its proportion of mercury. The tops of these chimneys are quite coated with cakes of white ar- senic, hanging aroundtheir mouths like masses of ice boutahouse spout in winter. At stated pe THE QUICKSILVER MINES OF NEW ALMADEN. 87 cONnE SINO FtUINAO We have now followed the process of mining ad distilling the quicksilver. A general out- line of the operation only can he given in these limits. The details would require an elaborate work, and as much abstruse scientific study as has been devoted to the subject by the savans of Europe and America. Foreigners who are acquainted with the sub- ject, assert that not even the great works of Idria can now compare in extent or complete- ness with those of Almaden. It is a commonly received statement that more than half a million of dollars have been expended by the company in California, Mexico, Spain, and Germany, to bring their works to their present perfection. The old furnaces have been long discarded, and the new series are master-pieces of elaborate ma- sonry, they are lined inside with a peculiar com- position such as constant and costly experiment has demonstrated to be best calculated to save the metal. Brick-making has been referred to as a part of the labor at the works. These are made in the patio at the mouth of the mine, of the sift- ings ~vhich are too fine for the furnaces, owing IF road to the patio is in such had condition as to retard the travel to and from the mine. They require less heat than the native ore; some of which, however, is introduced into the furnace with them, either to economize space or to facili- tate the process of smelting. It now only remains to return a while to the furnaces and witness the operation of filling the flasks from the iron vat into which the liquid quicksilver discharges from the condensers. Each furnace is pro-, vided with one of these reservoirs, which is augmented day and night from the silver fountain above. The flasks, which are imported from En- gland, are submitted to a powerful hydraulic test before filling to make sure of their soundness. These are made to contain Th pounds of the fluid, which is ladled out from the vat into a pan placed on a set of scales. From this it is poured carefully into the flasks by hand, the tops are then tightly screwed on, and the last opera- tion ofqnicksilver making is completed. SECTION o Co DENSING FUIINAC nods these are care~fnlly cleaned and the arsenic to its obstructing gathered for chemic~il uses. The accompanying the passage of the engraving gives an exact exterior view of one of heat through the the furnaces, with the trough for conducting the ore. This is con- metal from the condensers into the vat, and the sequently made condensing apparatus at the hase of the chim- into adobes, or neys. square bricks, The one following represents this furnace cut and stored at the into two lengthwise, revealing the whole in- hacienda for fu- ternal arrangement; the ore /in its receptacle ture nse. They ready for sublimating, the position of the fire, aregenerallysub- and the apertures connecting the different cells mitted to the fur- or condensing chambers through which the va- naces during the pors pass and change into quicksilver. ~vinter, when the I 38 HARPERS NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE. The flasks are now carted to the embarca- dero of Alviso, and sent thence to San Fran- cisco, whence they are exported chiefly to Mex- ico and South America. The first lady who accomplished the feat of exploring the New Almaden mine to its utter- most depths, and froni whose interesting ac- count, given in 1854, some usefnl hints have been obtained, speaks in the highest terms of the lib- eral spirit of the company, manifested in their treatment of their employ6ssecuring the best men, and retaining them by their best interests. Had the ore proved less rich, she remarks, or had not a far-seeing and enlightened policy actuated them, the company would, ere this, have been plunged in irretrievable ruin, as their outlays have amounted to but little short of their proceeds. This was three years sincequite an age in California. If the company have ex- pended half a million of dollars up to this date in experiments and improvements, they may be supposed to have completed their outlays in those respects. They have at least the reputation of maintaining a prudent secrecy regarding all their expenses and receipts. Visitors are amused with interesting anecdotes about the miners, the process of smelting, and the danger of pois- enous vapors but few are able to obtain any reliable da a, details, or statistics of the business. And doubtless the proprietors are right in this re- serve. Other companies may at any time be formed to work mines of cinnabar, indications of which have already been discovered, and the results of their experiments and outlays are equal to so much capital invested. It is not difficult, however, to arrive at some approximation of the receipts of the association. As early as, 1851the year following the com- mencement of the workingsthere were obtain- ed 1800 quintals (180,000 pounds) of quicksil- ver with only six ill-regulated furnaces, which might be called disimprovements or those of Idria. This amount wns distilled in about nine months, and was even then considerably larger than the whole amount produced at Idria. The proportion which this offered to the product of all Europe may be surmised from the fact that the annual yield of the mines on the Bavarian Rhine provinces is from 400 to 500 quintals (say 4500 pounds). That of Almaden, in Spain, in 1827, was 22,000 quintals. As the European mines do not appear to have been benefited by any important improvements for ninny years, it is likely that the amount coming thence does not annually increase as in the New Almaden. By referring to the records in the United States Custom-house at San Francisco, it ap- pears that in 1853 there were exported from the State 18,800 flasks of quicksilver (of 75 pounds each), or 1,410,000 pounds, valued at $683, 189, at the rate of fifty cents per pound. In the fol- lowing year (1854) the amount had increased to l,449,~000 pounds, valued at the same rate at $724,500; and this did not include what was used in the St~ te for mining purposes, which, with the incredible growth of the new system of hydraulic mining, now superseding all oth- ers, consumes, it is safe to say, a quarter of the entire product of the New Almaden. About 1,500,000 pounds (~r 19,320 flasks) were export- ed in 1854 to foreign countries. The ore of the New Almaden, which, as has been observed, is splely sulphurets of mercury, the rarest known, exceeds in richness that of any FILLINO THE FLASKS. THE QUICKSILVER MINES OF NEW ALMADEN. 39 other on record. Although its average is 36 mine than at any other; hut even here, to such per cent., specimens have been found with the a degree is the air filled with the volatile poison, incredible yield of 72 per cent. of mercury. that gold coins and watches on the persons of These are not uncommon, and sometimes the those engaged about the furnaces hecome gal- most beautiful crystals of sulphuret of mercury vanized and turn white. In such an atmos- are discovered. In 1812, at the works of Idria, phere one would seem to inhale death with ev- 56,686 quintals of ore yielded 4832 quintals of ery respiration. quicksilver, or about & 4 per cent. When it is Factitious or manufactured cinnabar.vermil- stated that blocks of metalliferous rock yielding ionhas not yet entered into the exports from only one per cent. are worked in Europe with California; the process of making it fs no longer some profit, the value of the California mine may a secret, as in former times, and may yet be- be estimated. No native or virgin quicksilver come a source of wealth to the State. But the has yet been found. The mine is apparently in- native cinnabar, of a deep red and brown color, exhaustible. The proprietors sometimes raise abounds, and, as has already been stated, served ghosts in the shape of water rushing in and com- the aboriginal inhabitants of California and Ore- pelling them to abandon the work, or the leads gon as a pigment. suddenly giving out, but no grounds exist for The miners have their local rules and regula- any such apprehensions. The Almaden mines tions, which are rigidly observed among them- in La Mancha set into the Sierra Morena in selves and recognized by the officers of the much the same manner that the New Almaden company. They are paid by the amount of ore does into the Santa Cruz range. The first has they bring daily to the surface, and each days yielded steadily for over two thousand years work is carefully noted as it is deposited in without diminution, and there is no likelihood separate piles in the patio. The work is car- of the latter becoming exhausted. ned on by gangs of from five to a dozen, accord- One of the most curious circumstances con- ing to the size of the shaft which is being worked; nected with the New Almaden mine is the effect and the weeks earnings count up in proportion produced by the mercurial vapors upon the sur- to the quality of the surrounding rock and the rounding vegetation. Despite the lofty chim- consequent ease or difficulty of the labor. Where neys, and the close attention that has been de- the rock is remarkably easy, the gang which voted to the secret of effectually condensing the has fortunately been employed in that direction volatile matter, its escape from the chimneys sells out or oftener gambles away the right to withers all green things around. Every tree on pursue the vein. Formerly the workmen aver- the mountain-side above the works is dead, and nged from $30 to $50 a week a piece, but of some of more sensitive natures farther removed late the average earnings have been less owing exhibit the influence of the poison in their to the decreased wages. Sometimes a lazy, shrunken and blanched foliage; but these ef- loafing fellow obtains employment and fails to fects do not extend to any great distance. Cat- perform his part; if this is continued, the en- tie feeding within half a mile of the hacienda gineerplaces him among a smart gang where he sicken, and become salivated; and the use of the is obliged to keep pace with the rest or quit thc waters of a spring rising near the works is guard- employ. With the extracting of the ore the min- ed against. It does not, however, affect a me- ers business ceases. It is brought to the sur- dicinal spring near by, which possesses the pecu- face by the tanateros, who are paid by the com- liar qualities of soda or Congress water. pany. Each gang selects one of their party to The workmen at the furnaces are particularly receive their pay at the end of the week, who, subjected to the poisonous fumes. These men though perhaps capable of inserting a cuchillo are only able to work one week out of fouc, under your ribs in revenge, or possess himself of when they are changed to some other employ- your purse, maintains an inviolable faith with meat, and others take their place for a week. his fellows. Pale, cadaverous faces and leaden eyes are the At an elevation of a few hundred feet above consequence of ev~n these i~horL spells; and any the patio, on the mountain side, is situated a vii- length of time continued at this labor effectually lage inhabited exclusively by the miners. Here shortens life and impregnates the system with may be seen a genuine Mexican aldea in full mercury. A French traveler, describing the perfection. The houses, or rather huts, are Almaden mines of Spain, states that the work- thatched with straw; placid-looking donkeys men, owing to the great quantity of vapors es- stand musing at the doors; chocolate-colored caping, become feeble at an early age, and suf- brats with huge paunches and shocks of frouzy fer the most cruel maladies. They generally die hair sprawl about in the sunshine screaming and a premature death. The atmosphere is charged quarreling in infantile Spanish; mangy dogs, far and near with the fatal poison, which a prop- pigs, goats, and fleas wander in and out at ran- er attention might do much to prevent, and serve dom a la Mexico; bedraggled seiioritas pass by to increase the profits of the works. These ac- with the peculiar careless saunter of the agua- counts may be easily believed when it is known dora, balancing her burden on her head; and that ores which by analysis leave no doubt that here, as in every other collection of Spanish they are half quicksilver, are made to yield only Americans, no matter how far removed from 10 per cent. Probably less mercury escapes home, one may notice the adherence to the na- from the present works of the New Almaden tional customs, to which the Mexican in particu 40 HARPERS NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE. lar is as religiously bound as the Turk to his neighborhood; and after a day of general break turbaa and petticoats, or the Indiau to his moe- down and jollification, in which cigars, bad bran- casin. dv, horse-racing, fandango, and monte are the Sometimes on dies defiesta, and on Sundays, component parts, the assemblage breaks up they send to San Josd for a geitarrista and a with a general stampede on horseback, and the violin or two, and get np a spirited dance, in little village subsides into its usual quiet. which the whole population assist. Here repair Nor do they neglect the forms of religion. the veqeeros and mantillad muckaclias of the Like devout Catholics they attend mass at stated a 0 a ROSEMARY. 41 periods at Santa Clara, and now and then have the Padre come over to help along their labors with a benediction or two. Besides this, they have in one of the recesses a shrine appropriated and dedicated to the holy protectress of tbe mine. This is a niche hewn with more than ordinary care out of the solid rock, in which is placed a small figure of the tutelary saint before whom propitiatory candles are constantly kept burning. Her ladyship is clad in a handsome white gown with red morocco slippers, bead eyes, and any quantity of head-dress and orna- ments. This is Nuestra Seflora de Guade- lupe, before whom the miners regularly pros- trate themselves to supplicate her protection from fire-damps, cavings, and sudden outbursts of water. Of the first, as has already been re- marked, there is no danger; of the second, no instance has occurred, as the galleries are well stanchioned; and though of the latter all live in constant anxiety, the mine has remained so dry up to this time as to need no artificial drainage. Having thus given a description of the works, which by American ingenuity greatly facilitate and economize the extraction of quicksiver, let us take a brief glance at some other mines of cinnabar known to the world. The chief locali- ties of cinnabar are in Almaden, in the province of La Mancha, in Spain, Idria in the Schiefer- gebirge, Kremnitz, and Schemnitz in Hungary, in Saxony, Bavaria, Bohemia, Nassau, China, Japan, Mexico, Honduras, Columbia, and Peru. The best known of these are the mines of Alma- den, Idria, and the Palatinate. The first are of unknown antiquity. Pliny states that the Greeks obtained cinnabar from Almaden seven hundred years before the Christian era, and that Rome in his time annually received seven hun- dred thousand pounds from the same mines. No accounts exist of the ancient methods used, but they must have been of the very rudest kind, as even at this day the ores are simply heated upon open arches, and the vapors are attempted to be condensed by inclosing them within brick or stone and mortar walls, which can never be rendered either sufficiently tight or cool. By these processes it is evident that only a small proportion of the mercury is saved, vast quanti- ties escaping, as was shown by the effects upon the workmen. The mines in Idria were discovered in 1497, and have been steadily worked from that time. From them was supplied the greater part of the quicksilver used in the Spanish-American silver mines duringthe fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The workings have been pushed to the depth of 280 yards. The product in quicksilver, notwith- standing the rude methods used to extract it, might easily amount to 6000 metric quintals (or about 1,200,000 pounds); but in order to uphold the price the Austrian Government has restricted the production to 150 tons (300,000 pounds). Such a policy can not long be followed with success, for the continued high price can only result in the development of other mines of cin- nabar, under the magic touch of American en- terprise. Two other valuable quicksilver mines have been discovered in California, and with the extension of Yankee industry over the terri- tory of our Spanish - American neighbors the veins of cinnabar in Central America will as- suredly be worked. Recent explorations have shown that valuable mines of cinnabar exist in Honduras, which only await foreign labor and capital to yield their glittering treasures. The mines of Idria are doubtless more extensive and richer than those of Almaden in Spain. In 1803, owing as it is supposed to spontaneous com- bustion, they took fire and burned in a whirl- wind of subterranean fire for many months. The flames were finally extinguished by drowning all the under-ground workings. The sublimed mer- cury in this catastrophe occasioned diseases and nervous tremblings to more than nine hundred persons in the neighborhood. The best known mines of cinnabar in South America are those of Guancavelica in Peru. These, of course, are worked with the most primitive~ machinery. In 1782 all the quick- silver used in the country for the purposes of silver mining was imported from the celebrated mines of Yun-nan in China. ROSEMARY. IN THREE PARTS.--PART II. THE ROSE IN BLOOM. APRIL showers bring forth June flowers, sings the almanac; and five summers have each shed a tenderer light over Melicent, so that it seems as if the souls of all their June flowers had centred their fragrance in a constant atmos- phere about her. Now, as she stands beside the old bureau, browned by age and glittering with its polished brassesstands gently dreaming over the single deposit of a little box, there is hardly a remnant of the cruel fire upon her face, no remnant such as burn or scar; but the indefin- able trace of its discipline purifies all the sweet features, where a perpetual paleness has spread its soft negation of tint like a bloom. Youth perished in that flame; but there arose from it, phantom-like, instead, the gentlest and most patient womanhood, with a presence that steals through the house like moonbeams. The naive vanity of the child is also gone; for it is easy to see by the absence of decoration, by the for- getfulness of the opposing mirror, that she has long since ceased to think herself lovely. That, perhaps, took place when first she lifted her head from the pillow and begged for the hand-glass; and the change since that terrible moment has been too gradual to be felt by herself. But the little wild-brier blossom that grows in the shad- ow is not more fair and touchlng than she. She wears a robe tinged in the faintest blush, con- fined simply at the throat with a button of pearls, no other ornament; but on her hair, passing un- der the chin and tied beneath the left ear, a rib- bon rose threaded with silver. This or some other she is never seen without.

ROSEMARY. 41 periods at Santa Clara, and now and then have the Padre come over to help along their labors with a benediction or two. Besides this, they have in one of the recesses a shrine appropriated and dedicated to the holy protectress of tbe mine. This is a niche hewn with more than ordinary care out of the solid rock, in which is placed a small figure of the tutelary saint before whom propitiatory candles are constantly kept burning. Her ladyship is clad in a handsome white gown with red morocco slippers, bead eyes, and any quantity of head-dress and orna- ments. This is Nuestra Seflora de Guade- lupe, before whom the miners regularly pros- trate themselves to supplicate her protection from fire-damps, cavings, and sudden outbursts of water. Of the first, as has already been re- marked, there is no danger; of the second, no instance has occurred, as the galleries are well stanchioned; and though of the latter all live in constant anxiety, the mine has remained so dry up to this time as to need no artificial drainage. Having thus given a description of the works, which by American ingenuity greatly facilitate and economize the extraction of quicksiver, let us take a brief glance at some other mines of cinnabar known to the world. The chief locali- ties of cinnabar are in Almaden, in the province of La Mancha, in Spain, Idria in the Schiefer- gebirge, Kremnitz, and Schemnitz in Hungary, in Saxony, Bavaria, Bohemia, Nassau, China, Japan, Mexico, Honduras, Columbia, and Peru. The best known of these are the mines of Alma- den, Idria, and the Palatinate. The first are of unknown antiquity. Pliny states that the Greeks obtained cinnabar from Almaden seven hundred years before the Christian era, and that Rome in his time annually received seven hun- dred thousand pounds from the same mines. No accounts exist of the ancient methods used, but they must have been of the very rudest kind, as even at this day the ores are simply heated upon open arches, and the vapors are attempted to be condensed by inclosing them within brick or stone and mortar walls, which can never be rendered either sufficiently tight or cool. By these processes it is evident that only a small proportion of the mercury is saved, vast quanti- ties escaping, as was shown by the effects upon the workmen. The mines in Idria were discovered in 1497, and have been steadily worked from that time. From them was supplied the greater part of the quicksilver used in the Spanish-American silver mines duringthe fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The workings have been pushed to the depth of 280 yards. The product in quicksilver, notwith- standing the rude methods used to extract it, might easily amount to 6000 metric quintals (or about 1,200,000 pounds); but in order to uphold the price the Austrian Government has restricted the production to 150 tons (300,000 pounds). Such a policy can not long be followed with success, for the continued high price can only result in the development of other mines of cin- nabar, under the magic touch of American en- terprise. Two other valuable quicksilver mines have been discovered in California, and with the extension of Yankee industry over the terri- tory of our Spanish - American neighbors the veins of cinnabar in Central America will as- suredly be worked. Recent explorations have shown that valuable mines of cinnabar exist in Honduras, which only await foreign labor and capital to yield their glittering treasures. The mines of Idria are doubtless more extensive and richer than those of Almaden in Spain. In 1803, owing as it is supposed to spontaneous com- bustion, they took fire and burned in a whirl- wind of subterranean fire for many months. The flames were finally extinguished by drowning all the under-ground workings. The sublimed mer- cury in this catastrophe occasioned diseases and nervous tremblings to more than nine hundred persons in the neighborhood. The best known mines of cinnabar in South America are those of Guancavelica in Peru. These, of course, are worked with the most primitive~ machinery. In 1782 all the quick- silver used in the country for the purposes of silver mining was imported from the celebrated mines of Yun-nan in China. ROSEMARY. IN THREE PARTS.--PART II. THE ROSE IN BLOOM. APRIL showers bring forth June flowers, sings the almanac; and five summers have each shed a tenderer light over Melicent, so that it seems as if the souls of all their June flowers had centred their fragrance in a constant atmos- phere about her. Now, as she stands beside the old bureau, browned by age and glittering with its polished brassesstands gently dreaming over the single deposit of a little box, there is hardly a remnant of the cruel fire upon her face, no remnant such as burn or scar; but the indefin- able trace of its discipline purifies all the sweet features, where a perpetual paleness has spread its soft negation of tint like a bloom. Youth perished in that flame; but there arose from it, phantom-like, instead, the gentlest and most patient womanhood, with a presence that steals through the house like moonbeams. The naive vanity of the child is also gone; for it is easy to see by the absence of decoration, by the for- getfulness of the opposing mirror, that she has long since ceased to think herself lovely. That, perhaps, took place when first she lifted her head from the pillow and begged for the hand-glass; and the change since that terrible moment has been too gradual to be felt by herself. But the little wild-brier blossom that grows in the shad- ow is not more fair and touchlng than she. She wears a robe tinged in the faintest blush, con- fined simply at the throat with a button of pearls, no other ornament; but on her hair, passing un- der the chin and tied beneath the left ear, a rib- bon rose threaded with silver. This or some other she is never seen without. 42 HARPERS NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE. Enter Grandpa Aubichonnot in person, for and few friends, and it might now and then that is out somewhere heyond the grape-vines, .,bave beguiled a monotonous moment to put out but in voice: a moulding finger and touch the mind of this Honey, what are you doing? little girl, secluded in her rose garden and sun- Nothing. shine. It did not occur to her, perhaps, as it The voice chimes with his as a silver vihra- could not have occurred to him, that in touch- tion might lose itself in the toll of a great steel ing the mind at this ~ge it is also possible to hell; but by some of the keen pulses of sonority touch the heart. he feels it, for he immediately responds: Ah, here. it is! said Grandpa Auhichon, Well, then, bring Nothing out here. pausing. The gardens run mad again on On the contrary, she hastily closes the little roses this June, and they have already laid hold scented boxit is a tiny thing of platina that of it. There; you see it was a block of ice at seems to be charactered, so curiously is it the pole, but drifting down, the warm currents wrought in some fairy tongue, an unknown ca- liquefied it to this shape. A famous sculptor, balism, and it is lined with the brown corruga- the warm South Seahe gave it a soul. tion of the Tonga bean. But tiny as the box For a moment the figure before her mingled may be, it holds all her treasuresone letter so entirely with Melicents meditations that she written on rustling silver tissue. On the con- experienced no new emotion; but then, trem- trary, she hastily closes this little scented box, bling, and all joyfully disturbed, she rememher- slips it among the folds of her dress, gathers up ed herself. As for the other, instead of step- some sewing, and descends. ping down from his pinnacle like a reasonably- Grandpa Aubichon sits in his cane chair; he behaved statue under such circumstances, he holds a great pipe between his fingers, ind dim- remained motionless and gazing upon Melicent ly in a cloud of smoke looms the apparition with a surprise and something of an embarrass- of a newspaperit is one of his economic prin- ment more than equal to her own. It was plain ciples never to read the evening news till that to Grandpa Aubichon that he had been prepared of the morning arrives, so saving much expend- for all disfigurement, and was thrown off guard iture of belief. He sits out in the broad ways by the complete contradiction of his expecta- and open spaces of the garden, a screen of trees tions. But to Melicent there came no such sug- I)ehind him, vistas before him, and on one side gestion. She remembered the dazzling bloom the gurgle of a little brook, whose edges are in which he had last seen her, and she could blue with the arrow-heads. So seated, Grand- not but believe him shocked by an entire and pa Aubichon has an idea that his tent is pitch- displeasing contrast. ed in the wilderness. Now you shall lunch and sleep before you And thats w.hat you call Nothing, is it ? speak a word, cried Grandpa Aubichon. Oh, I wasnt sewing when you spoke. No; let us stay here, said Ambrose, dream- What then ? ily, still with Melicents hand in his. It seems Looking over a box. like heaven. I come out of ice and fall upon Well, honey, here. My eyes are poor. roses. They were in bloom when I left. Suppose you look over a paper now? So they strayed back to the great chair, the Not so sly, Grandpa Aubichon. I read the younger man throwing himself on the turf, with paper last night. his face to the sky and away from the brook. Thats very unkind of you. You might I dont want to see the sight of water or have allowed me the surprise. hear a murmur of itat least till this ice-crash- If I could have counterfeited it sufficient- ing din is out of my head, he said. Its just ly. as if one had a hydrophobia. Hell come here, you know. Hes got no Poor fellow! He is thoroughly worn out. other home now. I was his guardian, and I Will you have the arbor pillow, Ambrosehalf suppose hes not forgotten us. poppypetals and half rose ? Forgotten us ! A Sybaritic invention! No, Ill take a Just here a great flush shot over Grandpa stone. Aubichons face, and extinguished his speech. As he spoke Melicent slipped the cushion un- Melicents eyes were on her work. He fixed der his head. his glance on an object beyond her, and raised Well, and what has Grandpa Aubichon been his finger toward it menacingly, but said: doing since I have been gone ? he asked, look- Here, honey. Ive had a new statue come ing up at her with a smile. home this morning. See if it looks most like a Grandpa Aubichon? Oh, making folks hap- bronze or an ice, py. Melicent was thinking of the letter in her And what has Grandpa Grey been doing ? little box, covered with its odd Russian and He is dead, said Melicent. Asian imprints, found cacluid on the very mag- Dead, repeated Grandpa Aubichon, with a netic meridian, and mailed by the finder from tone which in spite of its falling cadence was a some frontier fort high up in the corner of the great piece of exultation, like a long breath of continentthinking of this, and wondering if relief. there were yet no others for her frost-retained And it makes any difference ? in icy regions; for the writer had no relatives Why, yes and no. He did an unnecessary ROSEMARY. 43 thing, and left Melicent his property, disinherit- ing Flora. Flora? Ali! What had Flora to do with him? Flora was his adopted child. Taken out of the streets for her vagrant, gipsyish beauty. The same now to a whit I had forgotten, if I ever heard. Let me see !you had a great passion for her, had you not, Miss Melicent ? A great affection. I have it yet. Why dont you give her back her money, then ? It is funded in her name; but she will not touch it. I dont know where she is. Humph! Shell turn up. Why didnt he leave it to Flora ? Oh, she wouldnt marry somebody that Grandpa Grey wished she should. Quite romantesque! Well, and what have you been doing? Shes been making sunshine, replied Grand- pa Aubichou, vehemently; and has a quanti- ty laid by for rainy days. Dont use it for the next one that comes. I should so like to see a day weeping out of soft gray clouds, through screens and veils of glitter- ing green, once more. And now tell us what you have done, said Grandpa Aubichon. As definitely as you have replied to me? I have done nothing. Nonsense, Ambrose! We know by the re- ports that your journey and your voyage, with their five winters, have accomplished wonderful things. No fault of mine. Granted. Well allow that: any thing for peace. But what then personally have you been doing? Been getting up theatricals. Indeed! And in what did you play ? The Road to Ruin. I dont see your drift, said Grandpa Au- bichon, with a little puzzled anxiety. Well, then, I have rowed myself up Salt River. Didnt know it debouched under those par- allels. If you want the thing plainerI have bro- ken up my constitution Ambrose, dont talk like a fool Just as you please. Only the curse is on me. You look like it! cried Grandpa Aubichon, with ironic anger, and a face like the gargoyle eaving some ancient edifice. Pray believe that with as much certainty as you look forward to twenty summers I look for- ward to none. Ill believe nothing of the kind, Sir, storm- ed Grandpa Aubichon. Its shameful. Its an absurd imposition. Its a Its a Youve been round among a set of old fossil humbugs, who have frightened you to death for the sake of the fee. Die if you dare! Frightened me? On the other hand, it is rather a ~ubject of indifference to me. Ive no- thing in particular to live for. What destiny determines I shall do quietly. Perhaps the sharp share, Death, will turn up strange seeds, with rare new blossoms, in that dark furrow. Why not? Melicents work had fallen, and she sa1~ prick- ing the needle in and out, forgetful of every thing in creation. Shut in sunnily as they might be, they could not banish Death: his in- sidious breath was sliming the rose. AhI if Ambrose died, why should she live? Slowly raising her eyes, they met his, fixed on her. She did not think of taking them away. under such scourges souls are laid bare The dark orbs still held hers on their weary gazing, and when the eyelids fell, if in her soul hid a secret unknown even to herself, that glance had plunged and brought it, and held it up like a jewel to the others perception, and suffered it to fall again into the silent depths. And there the subject staidMelicent in an apathy, Grandpa Aubi- chon too much disturbed for any words, and the other looking up the clear heaven till its calm hushed him into a dream. Theres nothing under the canopy the mat- ter with him I then, after a while, growled Grandpa Aubichon. Nothing but fatigue. The colors the natural color of sleep, breath even, hands cool. Hes a splenetic simpleton. Ill hear no more such talk. Might have known twould be the end, he muttered, from the very day that accursed idea was broached. Why I suffered it to go on What under the sun Any man with common sense No result un der heaven Thered be an exploring party to hell if there were any way of getting back! And Grandpa Aubichon, fulminating his broken sentences, disappeared down the walks. The sun stole round and touched the sleepers hair caressingly. Mehicent rose and bent the boughs, and curtained her work upon them, that his slumber might not be broken; shook down a honey-suckle from its prop, that it might be soothed with sweetness unaware; went away and came again with a great bunch of green-house grapes, salvered on a vine-leaf, that when he woke should refresh him. Then she sat down as before, and, still with her eyes upon him, fell into reverie. She was remembering all her little past in these few moments, and, with the rest, remem- bering that letter against which her heart was even now beating, and which had so strongly affected her life, reaching her, as it did, at a time when all her capability of impression was most sensitively fresh and tender. She recalled how she had held it in tremulous fingers, turn- ed it over and over again in such pleased sur~ prise, measured every stroke, and lingered so long on the sealthat seal the imprint of an antler only, to be borne haughtily, lord of the forest, or stretched low upon the back for unim- peded career. Within, not much; trivial words of careless kindness; but, to her, every sentence 44 HARPERS NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE. weighed out of the golden scales of exporience. Of course the moon hasnt filled her horn She had not then reflected that it might he bnt threescore times without burning out some of a whim or the offshoot of an idle hoar; she had my vital force.. seen only that long months after he left her, she I was still as vivid an object in his mind and af- fections as on the very day of his departure. While the years fled this absent and idealized man had grown in her fancy to something of the demigod; the days when she had known him, careless days of her gladness and beauty, for- ever wore a halo; she felt how any one, be- lieved to be noble and pure, may come to over- shadow all a young girls heaven, till uncon- sciously she fashions her growth on his ideas and sees all nature only through their medium. She would have found it impossible to tell why, when she read the announcement of his return, such a thrill of wild happiness swept through heras impossible as to say why in that first moment of tardy greeting she had felt the earth shift beneath her tread and place her in isola- tion. It was not with bitterness that now she recognized this; she had built no castles in the air, and so no ruins encompassed her; she had never indulged a day-dream, and knew no bro- ken hopes; there had come to her simply the great need of loving. Living almost the life of a solitaire, she knew nothing finer than this heart; and denied, the fountain therefore did not shrink, but poured toward some other chan- nel. She suffered merely an undefined melan- choly, which for the moment breathed all about her face, but for the future was to be banished even from her heart, for there was enough glad- ness left in life. So absorbed was she ia her vague thoughts that she did not remark that the eyes of the sleeper had opened, and were regard- ing her as she regarded him. Miss Melicent,he said, in a few moments, you have just made a resolution. Now why should I not ask its nature ? She smiled a little. It was onlyonly to be very cheerful for Grandpa Aubichon. Miss Melicent, you know that sunshine flows spontaneously and perpetually only from a great joyful source of light and heat. I have a great joyful source of light and heat, Mr. Ambrose. Lucky for you. It was said between his teeth, like a fierce float of ice gritting against the pebbles on a beach. And the same sun shines for us all, Mr. Ambrose. He opened his eyes widely, singular shades swept over his face; he rose then, went to bend- ing lime-leaves and sipping water, collected a flock of orioles, swallows, and thrashes about him, and finally sent them all sailing down the stream on a strip of bark with hisbunch of grapes. Why, Mr. Ambrose, they were for you! And Ive used them, havent I? Now shall I tell you about my five years? Wheres Grand- pa Aubichon? If I could make one bore do for both of you it would save so many chips. Mr. Ambrose, I think you are a little changed. mean, not to suppose that, we should like to hear your story a thousand times. Till it was an old story? Pardon, I am not so young and succulent. Ab! any other than I would have been changec~ indeedwould have been made all over; but I hold stoutly to my identity. Miss Melicent, if I had been a sculptor I should have learned strange secrets of group and shape, and wonderful laws of curve that all the mechanics in creation cant explain; if a painter My God! what towering turrets and sailing steeps, what peaks of prisms, what arrows of snow-streaked lustre piercing a sapphire vault, what mystical ghostly splendors, what weird wild terrors, auroras, and midnights full of sharp black winds! I can teach you how to paint the desolation of icy silence. As it is, I may turn architect, and throw to the world a cluster of frozen minarets, a bundle of spires, one glacial dome. Mr. Ambrose, I never learned the reason why you are not already one of those. I can very easily tell you. When did you ever see a lake surrender its picture? And does a running river take tribute from the sea? No. I am just a mirrora mirror to receive the im- age and hold it in the depths of my being, but with no power of emitting a single ray again. That does not seem to be right. Yes, it would be entirely right if it were entirely true. But if I were so I should be con- tent, you see. And I am not content. What if I should tell you? I know intimately, he said, flashing and pausing in his walk, with his head turned aside that he might gaze upon her I know intimately that there is some expres- sion for my soul, my power, somewhere. But what? I used to feel it when I heard the great stranding bergs grind on the bottom, when the tough hawsers sung out the gale, tense as strings tuned to the storm; and I felt it again down there in the tropics, as if repeated in minor, when the palm fanned a dreamy pond and the waters lapped the coral reef in murmurous anti- phon; always when the wind blows. But I am thirty years old now, andit is of no conse- quence. Whatever it may have been it is~ all barnacled over with alien whims, pursuits, and purposes. I would give my life to know~ it, though; in fact, have I not given it? Mr Ambrose, I know 1 exclaimed Meli- cent, with radiant eyes. You? When you are well and strong I shall tell you ; -not before: and you are not to ask You will shut your secret in my dead hand then Do not speak so. Want of strength in the body is always felt in the soul, Grandpa Aubi- chon says. You are to be as well as I am, and as satisfied, and far, far more significant in Gods plans! that is in fate; do your best to meet fate half-way ! and her face glowed. ROSEMARY. 45 You would make Satan hope. That she would l cried Grandpa Aubichon, from a little distance, as he approached, rolling up his vial-case. Wide awake? Well, and what are you two discussing ? Every thing under the sun. And something under the rose, eh ? Yes, as you see, said Ambrose, plucking at the climbing noisettes above. Now, honey, there are ninety trifles and nine that need two brown eyes before dinner. Melicent gathered up her work to slip away.at his first syllable. And while she is gone, Ambrose, well look into your affairs, if you please. I know of a good investment or so, and I think you sold out when in England two years ago and left your funds on deposit? Melicent was stooping perforce to recover her scissors and spools and needle-book, that one after one kept rollingout of her hasty grasp, and unavoidably the reply struck her ear. One glance will answer, Sir. Drawn upon, and drawn upon. I have exactly enough to suffice me so long as I live. The last dollar will dissolve in my last tisane, and youll put the change on my eyes.~~ Great Heavens! are you lost to all sense of propriety? Have you no manner of feeling? Put these things off your lips and out of your thoughts. Never utter such a sentence again, unless you want to goad me into finishing your case with a dose of the bluest of pills! Ambrose laughed. You shall be obeyed, Sir. Then Melicent heard a great groan rend its way up from Grandpa Aubichons heart, and throwing an involuntary glance over her shoul- der she saw him turn suddenly and snatch the other to himself with a strong embrace, as if he had been a child, and his own child at that. And then with a certain inexplicable buoyancy, full of disbelief and of hope, she went in to await them. When they entered the house at length after repeated ringings, Grandpa Aubichon seemed older by years, so that one might have imagined him to have lent a portion of his life to eke out the shorter thread of another, and over that there was yet a singular appearance in his countenance as ifAmbrose afterwtLrd saidsome terrible pressure had closed a field of the ugliest gaps and crevasses into one solid surface; and the young man himself looked paler and somewhat weary, but with an air of intense happiness, as if for the first time in his life lie had found affec- tion and believed in it. After dinner Grandpa Aubichon walked up and down the room with a steady tramp, while Mr. Ambrose lay in the arm-chair by the win- dow and talked. I know why you think Im changed, Miss Melicent, he said at last, when adventure upon adventure had been recounted. Its because I speak so much of myself. You hadnt spoken of yourself then, Sir. VOL. XXVII.No. 157.D But you felt my capacity, madam. I suppose, he continued, upon Melieents smile, that every one looks back at himself five years ago as a fool. I know I do. Not to imagine that its all wiped away yet my hours break with a misanthropical grain: I shall begin to sting myself soon for enjoying your kindness in this basking way. But you see I ha~e been hibernating, living on my accumulations, my memories; and they were few. I had so few friends, scarcely any but yourselves, apd so they intensified, and every year has renewed and strengthened your personalities and plowed deeper grooves for you in my soul. I used to long so to know if you were alive or dead, Dr. Aubichon, and then curse myself for caring. I could have staid five years later if I could only have had a letter. II couldnt send, Mr. Ambrose, said Meli- cent, after his sidelong glance at her. You know the mails dont -run to the Pole. But you might have written nevertheless, and up in that magnetic element I should have known what you wrote. I did. I used to write you in my journal at first. Then I know what it was. For I used to fancy your blithe little voice in my ear half the time for a year or two. What made you leavh off? I dont know. I got to be too old. Yes. And sometimes in the superstitious darkness, when a sudden shrill wind caine whis- tling up from nowhere, and beat past us and away in fearful palpitation, when a spectral snow-wreath eddied and fell, when the wide and dreadful cold seemed to be an actual maleyolent presence brooding above us, a mighty compres- sion of terror, as if some fierce puissance had frozen and sealed up all beneficence, I. had strange fancies. I lost my way one night in the ice, I remember, when I had left the others be- hind and ~vas striking for the ship, t6 send them relief, and used all my ammunition in hopes to be heard, and wandered about till my wits be- gan to fail. And I saw at first a singular blue sulphurous light playing round my gun, and then I believed it grew and fluttered all about me, and finally centred itself and went flitting on and on in advance till, when at length it had led me within a rod of the ship, I fainted. But I didnt faint from exhaustion, I think. It vas sheer horror. Do you know, I thought the death-light was little honeys spirit here. Oh, Mr. Ambrose, so you think Im a sul. phurous spirit, do you ? - I think you belong to the rosiest of heavens! Mr. Ambrose, Ive no doubt that those years, which seemed so terrible to think of, did you great good. You know sometimes a string that would give too wiry a tone is wound with its own substance long-drawn-out and attenu- ated. And you think I give a softer note now ? I am no judge. Perhaps you would give a rich, full note now if properly touched. 46 HARPERS NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE. Pity I cant keep the vibration. No, it is in some natures as they listen to give a rich, full echo to a very sharp and griding sound. Bosh and blarney ! exclaimed Grandpa Aubichon. Honey, what are you drawing ? Oh, just faces. What faces? See if you can tell. Not I. The man in the moon? or the man without a shadow? or any bodys Doppelgdnger? I suppose it is Prince Athanase, said Mr. Ambrose at a glance, coming and leaning on the back of her chair, Though his life day after day Was failing, like an unreplenished stream, Though in his eyes a cloud and burden lay, is it not? If you choose. I hadnt any thing but the moments fancies. And then the color flew over Melicents throat and cheek, for she sav there the wave of the hair on the temple, the curve of the cheek, the droop of the mouth, that she hoped it were possible he himself had not seen. Ah yes, said Mr. Ambrose, with a slight start, and then a film of thought hazing slowly over his eyes, I can comprehend; and he sauntered back to his seat. But after this another mood had fallen on Mr. Ambrose; the summer .sweetness was veiled, and the old less lovely phase arose. Other people dropped in with the afternoon; a bluff sea-captain and his merchant for a chat with Grandpa Aubichon, a lady, a child. Mr. Am.. brose surveyed them a secondhe knew them of old and they were not to his tasteso tossing them a brief nod and word he relapsed into silence. And so for hours he sat, neither speaking. nor sleeping, nor dreaming, but just moodily rapt. A man who had wasted his whole youth in weak and wandering sin might have worn that weary guise nt length; but he there was scarcely a spot on his life, albeit the soul was not all unstained. Nor did he join them at the ten-table by-and-by, but moved his hand impatiently in sign to be let alone, for all Grandpa Aubichons resounding voice and Meli- cents gay clink of china, But when the latter brought him a cup of chocolate loaded with drowsy fragrance, and tiny crisp cakes baked from a recipe of Rose Standishs ~he said, he could not refuse to be beguiled into tasting. Melicent, he said, suddenly, by-and-by, as she stood near the piano watching a rosy ray from the sunset light up the forehead of Psyche, you said that~you knew mymywhat shall I say! vocations the cant, is it not? a while ago. Very welL Retain your knowledge. Its not mine unless I find it myself. If Ive not enough blind instinct to roll into my own orbit, its Gods fault, and I want no friendly shove from humanity Her only answer was to touch the keys till be- neath her fingers a vast chord grew up and wan- dered away in dropping vines of melody. He turned angrily, the blood shot up his fore- head till the wide veins roughly ridged it, his temples throbbed, his eyes flashed, and with that a great darkness swept off his face like the shadow of a sailing cloud, smiles rippled round his lips, and his eyes showered out light through the purple air as if a star were dissolving in their melting tenderness. Fer a time he stood so, as silent, as beautiful, as frozen as a statue, then he commenced walking up and down the room and unwittingly varying his movement as if to keep time with his thoughts. A band of wan- dering harpers struck their strings in quick fans tastic tune somewhere out - doors. Come, Melicent, let us waltz, he said; and together they went floating off in dreamy circles. Faster swept the hurrying strings without in their hazy unison, faster would have swept the steps with- in; but Melicent chose to linger on the beat, and with a lengthened languor swam in slower rise and fall. They seemed like the figures of a dream floating there, like blossoms blown by a murmuring wind, the darkness entered to gather and steal up about themthe phantoms of some graceful court, the creatures of the tune. A moonbeam rose and transmuted the soft gloom to amethystine mist, the harpers drew further away, their motion fell ever slower and slower till in stately grace it ceased. Then Grandpa Aubichon came in, and, find- ing nobody disposed to talk, dropped asleep, and sitting down by him Melicent began to smooth his hair and roll the thick silver rings about her finger, and quiet settled on every object whibi the chiming clocks twice sung the hour, and the roses shook in flagrant response at the case- ment. Mr. Ambrose, still radiant, though si- lent, was standing half wrapped in the folds that always shrouded the picture of Melicents mother. Melicent, he said, abruptly, in one of those singular tones that are scarcely to be heard by another than the one addressed, Play it again! Sound that master-chord, that soln-. tion, that voice of the dumb soul, that key to my secret! I can not play it again, Mr. Ambrose, she said. It just came over me then like an in- spiration. I dont know how.to play. Then I shall ! he replied. He went and sat down before the keys, bowed his head in some invocation, and then lifted his hands fearlessly, as if lie could perfectly draw forth their golden hoard. But the soul within them was silent, the voice that he questioned was mute, masses of sound groaned disorderedly beneath his touch. Melicent, listening, became as one lost, his dream overshadowed her, all the universe seemed tolose its law and the world to be in harmony with these strange phases that followed one another in endless succession like the waves of mid-ocean lashed by storm, and never melting to any perfect whole. Then a great clang resounded. And that is not it either ! cried Ambrose, rising. Sing to me, little honey. And Melicent sang. It was just a thin, clear voice, fit for lullabies, delicate and low, singing a luscious little Italian night- ROSEMARY. 47 songmuch such a humming strain as a bee might croon over his cells of scented sweet with a blossom standing sentry at the door. But it was a shore to the tossing unrest in his mind, it broke there and subsided, and merged into gen- tly swaying sleep. Always sing to me such songs, dear little girl, he said. I believe you are my guardian angel cheated of your wings and your primal memories. At least you are Gods bird of dawn, singing on a rose-tree spray under the morning- star. Good-night. He staid to strike a light. What is this little thing, this thought, on my lips, that comes and still will come? he mur- mured. And taking up the light he went out, singing in an under-tone as he went, Purple shadows, darkly dreaming, On a distant grave. No~v lies got a new kink ! exclaimed Grandpa Aubichon, who could bear nothing of this sort in his neighborhood, and had been in visible torment for the last hour. Now hell go plunging off to Germany to bury himself in uncouth sounds, or go up in a fiery chariot from some peak of the Apennines ! . That is to say, a balloon. A polite way for naughty Grandpa Aubichon to call people A bag of wind No; he wont go, hell stay with you. Well. But you mustnt any longer. If youre a little bird of dawn you must go to sleep before its time to get up. I ~vish we had some- thing to keep the poor fellow from moping to death with ennui, though. If we only had Flora ! Ill tell you what, honey. To-morrow I must go to Babylonits a meeting of the Kill or Cure Societyand Ill see a friend or two and make some inquiries, and you have a letter ready, and well find her if shes in the land of the living. Dear old GrandpaAubichon! What would the worki be withQut you ? I hope your world wont be without me for a good while yet, honey sweet. Dear Grandpa, you know youre so hale and strong, she said, nestling her face in his shin- ing curls, and Im soso not hale and strong dont you suppose I can contrive to die when you do? I suppose youll die now if you dont go to bed; holding your eyes open with both hands! There, go to! Kiss me pleasant dreams and scamper! Grandpa Aubichon being gone the next week and the next, what was to hinder their taking themselves, to the wilderness ?for a continua ~tion of the garden stretched away into a great deciduous forest known by that title through all the country round. There was something very inspiriting and gay in the edges of these woods the sunshine came filtering through the eme- raId-roof with such a golden strain, the color of the sky cut itself with such a jewel-like trans- parence against the sharp angle of the oak-leaves, here and there a pine feathered off into the nil, and gave such a depth of shadow to the brilliant lights of elm and birch, those jocund birches, frolicking and rollicking from sun till shadow, so glad to have brolten into the summer, titter- ing and twittering, and set off by every slightest breeze into a fresh flutter with new hoards of gamesome secrets to whisper awaya m~n would need dye his conscience in blackest hellehore be- fore he could he sad beneath hem. Here all day long there was whistling and trilling above: the partridge whirred beside the path, the rabbit darted across it, and now and then in an open space they could see a young eagle slowly wheel and sail away again. A great white orchis sweetened all damp places, ferns tufted the in- terstices and tossed like plumes of tournament, and the moss ~f ages, velvet soft and freshly verdurous, draped rock and mound with cush- ioned ease. Now and then a break in the woods opened on wide meadow scenes where all color lay diffused in vaguest dreamshere the waving whitening rice-plain, there strained with rusty reds and deepening purples, and every where shifting the disguises with each cloud that swept a shadow across them. Beyond, on one side rose dun hills, on the other slumbered the sea. Here in the dry, warm, sun-soaked moss lay Ambrose; and Melicent, throned on the low boughs, talked to him in a little monotone that she meant should give him rest, but which had the~ art of keeping his attention perpetually on the alert to catch the next inflection, it was so in tune with the rustle of the leaves, the murmur of the wind seemed to slide through it, and the faint hum of the forest wings; and as he listened, he watchedwatched the fair face so pure of the worlds breath, telling of lonely life and deep self-intimacy in its freedom from all outer im- press. In the hours when she read to him, or when she sung quaint ballads, he fancied that he must have already died, and be lying now on the outskirts of heaven with some sweet saint to tend him. Nothing jarred with the dreamy state in which her presence wrapped him, other than thus her individuality never appeared: she be- came the incarnate shadow of his mood, what- ever that mood might be. At length, when little remained of the past on which to speak, and they had not found that unreserve which opens the heart of to-day, however they might ap- proach it with trembling divining rods, Melicent brought to light a cluster of those strange ro- mances where in each one some man has gar- nered the whole poetry and reverie of his life, and so given his all to the world, embalmed his soul and diedand in such spheres, foreign and deep- ly delicious, they spent the long summer days. The ideal surrounded them and blended indefin- ably with daily thingsthe light was softer, the perfume deeper, the delight immortal. Each bor- ro~ved for the other the investments of the scene: they charmed and soothed as those of whom they read charmed and soothed: the one became grand and heroic with a hidden pathos in his life, the other more tenderly beautiful and holy. Love 48 HARPERS NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE. already shook his wings about them, and shed strange hints upon the air. Wandering home in the late afternoons they repeated to each other, till they timed their steps, such clinging verses as had nestled immemorially in their hearts. Sometimes so the day broke up in splen- dor; sometimes an east wind, rathe and rasping though so low, crept in and brushed the fogs be- fore it; cold, treacherous vapors that, white and fleece-like, traildd all about theni and overlay the branches like low-hung clouds; and after one such stroll Mr. Ambrose sought the wilderness no more. He was ill now, prostrate and pale, but not suffering, for Melicent seemed to spell all pain away, to prevent it, to destroy it; but when Grandpa Aubichon returned, he saw that the enemy had made long strides and fortified his intrenchments Come, come, honey! he cried. Youre helping this man imagine himself in extremis. Hurry about, shuffle a little, make a noise ! Noise! said Mr. Ambrose, rising on one hand from his lounge. Why dont you ask one of the little cherubshead and wingsia the Prayer-Book corners to make a noise ? They generally are doing their silent best with a penny trumpet. Noise from a sunrise cloud in the house, a balmy breath In fact, a medicated vapor, laughed Meli- cent. But here Grandpa Aubichon bustled round himself to change the aspect of things; in the first place emptying a basket of blossoms in a rosy rain over both Melicent and Ambrose, then winding up the old music-box till it struck to the tune of Alaster MAlaster, and finally loop- ing back the curtains, throwing wide the shut- ters, and flooding the place with lustre. A long yellow beam touched Melicent: as Ambrose watched it strike and spread about her, its effect was for him like that of the writing on the wall, and then in its heat and power all the secret writing of these swift days started into light. From their warm drifting dream he was awake. He seemed to hold his heart in his handnh, how noble, should his grasp close and he carry this new fact with him, like a slumbering angel of resurrection, into his tomb! Ah, how self- ish, should he weld that young life with his own in the forge of a life-long sorrow! He fell back faint and blind, roused by the airy sprinkle of perfume from that little hand above him. Ah, how sweet to lapse along this sunny tide, and so sink into the great sea! Well, honey. I have found Flora, said Grandpa Aubichon at tea. Found Flora ! Traced her. And been doing what do you suppose? I cant wait to suppose, dear Grandpa Aubi- chon ! Studying for the stage! And has a won- derful engagement in prospect. Ambroses lip curled in a silence of satirical scorn. And will she succeed ? asked Melicent, sparkling. She has extraordinary talent. ~ I always knew there was somethingdear old Florbut I nevey thought of that. Opera, of course. And did you get down on your knees, Grandpa Aubichon, and beg her to coma here? I left an urgent message to the effect that this was her home: in case she fails, you know. But she wont fail? Here Grandpa Aubichon plunged into a heap of accumulated letters, and Mr. Ambrose saun- tering to the casement, at length stepped through it, drawn by certain deep-honeyed scents be- yond, and then down the walks and out into the warm rich sunset. When, half an hour later, he turned the angle of the house, the picture of Melicent, as she sat half-way up the old wooden staircase, now as before covered with the honey- suckles rich and satisfying atmosphere of sweet- ness, struck him not so much as a picture as like the reflection of himself in a glass. He was only watching the ruddy tinge of the west cast back and painted on the ten~ler east, and he mounted and sat beside her. You look quite well, she said, gayly. I am quite well. I was before. Only one needs a point to pronounce the fact for one, and that was Dr. Auhichons return. How sweet the air, how lovely the hour ! he murmus:ed, after a brief silence of, enjoyment. Youll never ~die here; this house, this garden, it is only a little suburb, of immortality. If it were! Dont you suppose the gods tire of them- selves and have dreadful yawns ? No; they have laughter never spent, you know. Nothing so blissful as a gods nature could. The sun would sooner cease shining. Here a pause, into which the stars stole trem- bling, and soft darkness crept up to woo the fragrance. Strange! lie exclaimed, at length. When I came I was so indifferent to death; and now, in thinking of it, I seem to look out of these clasping sunbeams into a cold, black, and horri- ble gap.~~ Why, Mr. Ambrose, then you do not love God ! No, Miss Melicent, I love you ! If some wand of transformation had stricken her the blow would not have startled more. She had schooled herself never to hope for it, to dream of it, fancy it; and at the sound wide valvesfolded back and the lustre of a new world smote her in the face. She had known calm, and here was turbulence: into her soft demi- monde broke fierce lights and shades. An emo- tion that should have been joy and was yet like fear made her soul tremulous within her. Pro- viously love had permeated all her substance, the love that is sacrificeshould she receive into her soul the love that is divine? The winds seemed to breathe about her with fervor as she leaned toward his waiting arms; the stars to. ROSEMARY. 49 throb in silver chorals; the very blossoms to burst their innermost cells and diffuse around her a fresh and sacred meaning: her eyes anoint- ed read the secret of creation. And ho who had caused this commotion, who had laid such a hand on her heart-strings, and was arousing a vibration never to cease, attend- ed her will with assured quiet. Words had escaped him which he had meant to seal in si- lence forever, and now he must bear their weight. And yet, Melicent, said hc, it is hope that makes the horror. Death will be as idle a word as before if you say that you do not care for me.~ But you know I do, Mr. Ambrose. Ab! to be so drawn into those arms; to be wrapped away in that heart; to cease standing without the walls of heaven; to enter with the worship, and become lost in the god! Soul seal- ed with soul, one life, one death, one eternity. No longer apart from him, but, come what fate might, his very self. As Melicent clung to her lover in the first timid flush of joyful trust she believed herself blessed among women: so glad- ly she assumed her destinythe destiny of all her kindthe cross, the crown of thorns, the everlasting rapture. There was but little to say: the tide rises higher than words over full-freighted moments. A murmured endearment, a tonch, a caress; the love was so profound, the bliss so still. They sat, tenderly tranquil, and suffered the night to deepen around them All nature seemed to conspire, wishing to soothe and to satisfy, send- ing its hushed influences to reassure them there sequestered in the gloom and fragrance. And as Ambrose, with closed eyes, felt her breath on his cheek, and her head bowed above him in the broad-burdened hour, anti under the solemn midnight depths, he could have imagined that they floated out, up-buoyed, on some sweet sea that was to strand them only on the shores of another world. But a voice broke through the quiet lapse: Grandpa Aubichon summoned them in, as he woke ~uddenl.y to the fact of their absence and of the fallen dew; and they parted there, under the stars, in that first separation, pointed as Ithuriels spear, the test of true and false, and after which each fears to look at the other lest they have only dreamed. How sunnily the days slipped bythe weeks how swiftlybrimmed with happiness, yet calm as pastorals! Pain nor grief rose before them; death was carried captive. Life became to Mel- icent a summer idyl. Her sensation was so in- volved with the complete joy of these days that, whatever disaster or despair might overtake her, her whole nature would be sealed and stamped with their impress, her temperament infiltrated with their effluence, and she could not but take even sorrow kindly. And as for him, the fact that he was capable of such experience, could so inspire, could so receive, alone insured his souls salvation. Still~ the rose opened wider and wider; each day unfolded a rarer petal; and they Wandered in fresh labyrinths of sweetness. With Melicent youth was at flood. But for this season she would have glided through a life of soft neutral tints; now her emotions broke in flashes of vivid color. So new and so precious was her delight, that certainty of possession was in perpetual ebb and flow. With heIr all was riot; with Ambrose all was calm. Over his dark eyes and keen features there grew the re- finement of peace. Yet you would never have knowaher joyous trouble except for the chang- ing flush low on the cheeksfor the sparkle kindling and quenching in the irids. The old repose and gentle calm hovered round about her manner yet. And all the time Grandpa Aubi- chon went and came, like a beneficent Jove, drowning care in the splendid skies that July had folded about the earth, and happier than Jemschids jeweler could have been, because he had a love-affair npon his hands. But yet there was a thorn beneath th~ rose. If she had fail- ed to feel the sting when she grasped it first, the pain throbbed there now, for in the very words wherein he told his love he had denied a larger love. Daring and yet distrustful, she waited, knowing that, ~vhile this love ripened in all. its suns and breezes, that must needs be bornnot knowing that in her life alone he was daily lift- ed to a higher plane. The days when Ambrose made delicious drowse all the noon in scented hay-ricks, lolling home from the fields at length on the cloud- cushioned loadsthose days were all over the berries, too, dark and shining, as clusters of midnight dew should be, were left for the birds to peck up on the high hill-pastures, and he heaped himself no more with sheaves of the aro- matic fern, but chose instead the broadest sun- beam of the garden, and steeped himself in it with most oblivious idlesse. To-day a shimmering August rain was falling every where, and to dispel the musty dampness of the rooms Melicent went about sprinkling rose-water till the air was sweet as that of some Oriental palace-court. The fine showers came sifting half through sun and half through cloud, till it seemed as if a hoar-frost were sheeting its jeweled net-work round the windows, and every once in a while a ravishing rainbow started up from nowhere, and as suddenly melted again into the murk weather. I always said there was enchantment here, said Ambrose, pointing at the rain. Here we are sealed away from the world in our crystal walls; and these are the last letters Thomas will ever bring you! Melicent rose to take them, and sat down again at his feet. Thats for Grandpa Au- bichon, she said; and that, and that; here are the Sodom and Gomorrah papers; thats for you; heres mine. Dear old Flor! dont it look as if she wrote with a sunbeam ? Well, honey, said Grandpa Aubichon, entering with his pipe in his fingers, what news? 50 HARPERS NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE. Flora. Every thing! Appears in the fall goes Southsings in Havana. Cant come to us till spring. Concisely given. Then we must go to her. We, Grandpa ? All ofus. Arent we well enough here ? sighed Am- brose. Are you going to break the spell ? Summer is your life, my lad. This one is This life is most over. Yes. Tush! Then let us slip into another. When? Oh, after harvest. That will be too late, murmured Melicent, reminded of what she endeavored to forg& and refused to believe. The frosts are deadly. Nonsense! It will do him good to see the sunny half of an October peach. Ali yes, Grandpa Aubichon, one word for him, and how many for somebody else? You have seen the sunny half of sixty October peach- es, take a citron or a papaw this year. Little tyrant! See what it is to have no liberties, Ambrose. Well, then, let us sail in October. Those my letters, honey ? Shall you like it ? asked Melicent of Am- brose. Of course I shall. Simmering over the sea, resting there under giant plumes of luxuriant leaf beside the plain of everlasting azureso sireamy, so lazy, as it breaks inshore, but far out creaming on the coral reefs. I should like to be buried in the sea, Melicent. Let me down into the deep of that inverted heaven that I may feel its great heaving heart and share its infin- ity. She threw her arms forward and around him, caressing through impetuous tears, striving to speak, hut stifled with sobs, and assuaging the sudden anguish with kiss after kiss scattered on his lips. Hush, hush, little love ! he said, partly ris- ing. It was only a fancy. Dont cry; forget to think. Perhaps ~ve shall never die, who knows? And so he soothed the aching heart, and won the fair face back to its old guise, half peace, half melancholy, the parted lips yet trem- bling with the returning thought, the eyes yet gleaming through suspended tears. Dont let them fall, he said, lightly. Keep them till I go. Till you go? But I am going too. Are you really? I thought that was one of Grandpa Aubichons canards to make the idea easier at first, so that parting should not come at last in a grand douche. So much the less need of sorrow. You go with me, sweet? Yet how do you know I shall allow it? Allow it ? I may be too ill to have any but the near- est But here the color touched his face as he remembered himself. Mr. Ambrose, replied Melicent, simply, after a slight pause. I suppose you mean I should go as your wife. But do you knowI feel that your love for me arose out of weakness and pain. I have no right to take advantage of it, for in peifect health you might choose a very different person. Then you mistrust me, Melicent ! Is it mistrust? No,it. is love, it is love! she whispered. So Summer strippedoff her glpry and was away over the seas, ~vhere shortly Grandpa Au- bichon and the others found her. Having as- certained that the residence of a man whom he had known iu the days when he followed the sea was yet in existence, though vacant, thither Grandpa Aubichon transported a household. This man had been a descendant of the old buc- caneers, and with the instinct of race had fixed his home in a very solitude of sea. Aside from the highways of the ocean, it leafed and fruited unsuspected through its ages; ap- proached by nothing but shallop or corral, an islet less than half a mile in extent, cousin to the Cayman-braque and those myriad others pearls threaded with most melodious names-far too insignificant for charts. They reached it in boats; and leaving behind them the blue mount- ains of Jamaica, it seemed at first, lying so low in its shoals, the merest vapor steaming forever from the surface of the shining sea; and then with. nearer view, as its one granite needle and its gigantic group of palms and mangos sketch- ed themselves against the light, a fleet of masts. floating up the horizon; and suddenly, with one of the fantastic sea-transformations, they found themselves slipping along the shore through wa- ters darkly transparent under the lofty shadow of its arching grove. Long forgotten by its cen- tral fire-fountains, the isle yet dimly preserved their trace, and, crater-like, its heart dipped be- tween the shore and the precipitous south shaft into a gentle hollow, where all soft airs and. medicinal balms collected. On this rocky shaft the winds that came across the sea, full freight- ed from their far flight over rankei regions of unbounded . forestwildernesses where tropic odors broodeddropped half their rich lading in precious dew, that whether it dripped from spine to spine of the great cactus blooms that starred the topmost crevices in crimson and in snow, or wafted thence on breezes of balsam, seemed yet to breathe round the place an invio- late wall that shut it from the salt sea i.n an iso- lation~of perfume as our atmosphere shuts us in from space. Nestled in this island valley, and ringed with the giant feathery ferns, they seem- ed to be below the level of the waters that em- blazoned themselves above in one edge of deep- est tint, like the rim of a drinking-cup embossed in a wrought-work of sapphires, and out of wlii~h the sky foamed forever in a golden luxury of light. Half-way up the great rock a fountain burst into the air, and leaping along under domes of spray and rainbow, it tore swift passage down the shaft and disappeared in a fissure again, whence conducted through some dark passage, it fell on the other side into the sea; but its impetuous wings fanned into life great cur- rents that swept away all impurity, and the 4 ROSEMARY. 51 beatings of its constant heart sent freshness in great veins of health throughout the air. Im good for so long as youve the mind to stay, Dr. Aubichon, cried Ambrose. Its impossible to die here. Its just a day dropped out of heaven, taking such sh~ape as it fell. A thousand years as one day. Twouldnt be too long for me if it werv, replied the other. As for Melicent, she looked about her in a maze. It seemed to be a garden floated off from the lost Manoa, becalmed and moored in this enchanted spot. Sweeter than the valley of Avilion, more mysterious than. the yet un- found Isla de Ann, so hidden from others that it would seem to have repelled their compass needles, and have become unattainable as a cloud in heaven, sphered in impenetrable sum- mer. In later years, as her memory went to hover over it, she could hardly believe that it were any thing but the wildest vision, till one spot embowered in its shadows rose and stamp- ed it ineffaceably on fact. But apart from its mystic seclusion, from its air of everlastingness, as if it were a thing forgotten by the great pow- ers of the universe, passed over by destruction and decay, all its tides and breathings were balm. In this languishing warmth, this fertil- izing atmosphere, they might well forget the future; the luxuriant riot of stem and root, the great flowers that seemed, as they hung in the shadow, to be radiant with the inexhaustible life in their hearts, the depth of sky, the won- drous loveliness on every side, the iery ap- proach of so much vitalityfrom them all Am- brose drewa stronger, longer life. And Grand- pa Aubichon, who appeared to think that in bringing Ambrose here he had deployed a won- defful strategic force over nature, and diploma- tized with death, rubbed his hands in an im- aginary lavatory every hour, and regarded the sleeping and waking breath of his patient as entirely an affair of his own workmanship. Melicents presence threw round this airy habitation all the grace of home. Books, and prints, and tiny treasures of alabaster scattered themselves about; and shells of curious beauty, picked up along the shore to which they now and then climbed, vased the torrent of blossoms that daily overflowed the house, the house it- self buried in splendid trailers, and a deep tan- gle of loose and interlaced greenery. The place seems to seize every thing, said Ambrose. If you stand still long enough un- der that dropping yagney spray it will knot you ~and net you iii inextricable coils. If I lie here five minutes, letting this dazzle of light soak through me, I find a foot or a hand fast banded in the hurrying vines. It must be as healthful for the soul as for the body here, Nature seems so desirous of taking us to herself. It seems to me like those Happy Islands in Mirzas dream, said Melicent. Yes, and that is very cheering, he replied, throwing his clasped.hands above his head and falling back, to luxuriate more entirely, be cause, of course, you couldnt be there unless you deserved to be. And so you feel yourself possessed of all the virtue incident to those peo- ple who went to and fro in white robes and with harps of gold. And what adds to the feeling, she said, is, that we lose the count of the days; the seasons are so confused that we seem to have done with time. And to have begun eternity? Yes; but that is one of our errors, because we merely pass the hours, merely spend. them. We measure time; formerly people weighed it. Clocks are convenient liars; they have taught us to regard eternity not as a state of being, but as an affair of duration. I dont think men will ever get it through their gross perception, till death refines them, that there are no such things as time and space. Listen. Mr. Ambrose, is that a nightin- gale? A noonday nightingale. An unrecognized species. It comes so from that covert of shade, it seems as if the golden anther of that great white bell were singing. And the fragrance were the tune. They listened till the song went wandering away into deeper depths of shadow, where it should refresh itself in the richest draughts of the honey-wine. Oh the place is haunted, said Ambrose, then. Doubtless elfinlybut haunted. We are waited on and welcomed by the souls of the fairies who died with Shakspeare. I shall come out here under the midnight, some time, darkly bathed in odorous dew, and surprise them at their revels while they think us asleep, and have stepped from their aura of invisibilityand I shall learn wonderful secrets, secrets that they whisper am~ themselves, or that drop, a little later, from th~ lips of listening orchids. For instance For instance, I shall learn that we preserve the immortality we have found here only on condition of never seeing the full moon. That this Governess of Floods who hides her sceptre and pretends to be a satellite, in her witch-dance round the earth, rules the tide of the trees as the tide of the seas, and therefore the spells that I may work with a spike of aloe when the sap mounts or when it falls. I shall learn that the poisons that are death-pangs in her gibbous ray are innocuous sweets as she wanes. 1 shall learn at what moment of what receding night- tide to climb the shores rim yonder, and, de- scending the beach, find my mermaid with per- fumed locks singing dulcet strains on the reef outside the dark lagoon. And ,I shall feel a dim warning that has been read from the mystic writing on the sphinx Atropos, a dim warning of the hour in what dark morning prime these phantoms shall cease to stand betueen me and the actual, and the beetle and the glow-worm begin to stake out my grave.,~ You will be a great enchanter, said Meli 52 HARPERS NEW MONTHLY MAX?AZINE. cent, laughing in order to hide the shudder that would creep coldly over her. And you will command the springs of life and know the po~ tent berry in whose juice the Immortals dip their spears, that you told me of yes~rday, so to shoofr Death with his own shafts. You will become a very Poke o Moonshine, and will naturally dissolve in these torrefying sunbeams if you dont seek a roof straightway, said Grnndpa Aubichon, rising from his own nest and shaking off the deposit of a tropical hour that had tried to assimilate him with the granite foundations of the place. Saint Aubichon, in an aureole of flower- dust and powder off moths wings! exclaimed Ambrose. Of course we are his thralls. Not obeying the saints here, they bring a hurricane or an earthquake, or some other day of judg-. meat, and explode it round about us. At his service, he a4ded, rising. Come, darling, theres a dream in a drowse waiting to chariot you through siesta! And catching Melicent like a lily-stem, he throned her, perfect and pe- tite, upon his arm. Dontyou see howstrong I am? he said. I absorb vitality from the leaves. Make the most of them, responded Grand- pa Aubichon. Your stock for threescore and ten must be stored in as many days. Times half up. Not a moment more to linger? Its idle talking; I cantl go. I never shall be satiate with this sea, this splendor, this drunkenness of odor. This sweet sunny space has been such bliss, Dr. Aubichon! It has been such rest, such quiet. One of the seasons when the soul grows, said Melicent, laying her cheek against his hair hair whose fine soft darkness alone would have attested the owners organization. It has made me so good, too, he said, laughingly; and tossing her to hisshoulder with one of his old arts of the athlete. I cant imagine the possibility of sin. I am sure I am an angel! I am sure somebody else is. honey, come down, or I. shall think you are going up for good. I cant go up for bad, Grandpa Aubichon. Yes you could, if you left us behind. Ah, wherever I go, I shall yet have her. My rose can never close its petals ! And so the three disappeared under the dense forest screen of shadow and coolness. OSGOODS PREDICAMENT. OSGOOD took a cane-bottomed chair whose edges had given way from the application of boot-soles, cane and umbrella ferules, and studied his predicament. He commenced this necessary study early in the morning in his room, which was in a boarding-house situated in this metropolis. The early carts were tak- ing their way down town through a blue haze, which in the country prefigured a golden day. The milkman, the walk-sweeper, and the rag- picker, were the only creatures moving in Os- goods neighborhood. The time was propitious for meditation and resolve, but Osgoods head was not ready. The still Champagne that he had drank the night before buzzed in his brain. With a glass of it in bis~ hand, under a side gas- light, in the drawing-room of his,Aunt Formica, he had proposed marriage to a hands6me dash- ing girl,and the handsome dashing girl had ac- cepted him. They swallowed the bubbles on the beakers brim, thinking it was the Cup of Life they were drinking from. Neither supposed that the moirment was one of exhilaration or en- thusiasm. Osgood never felt so serious, or so determined to face the music, as he called it, which was the short for a philosophical design to march boldly through life, and shoulder its necessities with a brave spirit and a martial air. Osgood was intelligent, agreeable, and hand- some. lIe had advanced no further into life than to give this impression. He knew no- thing more of himself than that he was intelli- gent, handsome, and plucky. He had no fa- ther or mother, but he had an aunt who had married Mr. Formica; this pair, effete in them- selves, belonged to that mysterious~ class who are always able to get their relatives places un- der Government. When Osgood was eighteen they obtained a place in the Sub-Treasury, which yielded him the income of fifteen hundred dol- lars. Aunt Formica, expected a great deal front him in the way of deportment and dress. The exigencres of his position, she observed, com- pelled him to do as those around him did. Of course he never laid up any of his salary, but he kept out of debt, and in doing this he fulfilled the highest duty that came within his province. His associates were young men who had more money than he, and who expected him to spend as much as they spent. The houses he visited were inhabited by people who took it for grant- ed that all who came in contact with them were as rich as themselves. The Formica interest was large. When he went to Washington with his aunt, he ~vent the rounds of the senators houses and hotels in the way of calls, dinners, and parties. When he went to Boston with her he began his visits at the xight hand of Beacon Street, and branched into the streets behind it, where as good blood abides, though it has nqt the same advantage of the air of the Common. Wherever he went expense was involved, in the way of gloves, bouquets, cards, fees to errand boys~ exchange of civilities in lunches, cigars, ale, brandy, sherry, stage, hack, and car fare, which he bore like a hero. Lily Tree, the girl whom he proposed to mar- ry, belonged to a family of the Formica species. It sailed through society all a-taut with conven- tion, and was comme ilfaut from stem to stern. Lily and Osgood had alwayskuown each other. They passed through. the season of hoop and ball, dancing-school, tableaux, and charades to- gether; sympathized in etteh others embryonic flirtations and were such fast friends that no

52 HARPERS NEW MONTHLY MAX?AZINE. cent, laughing in order to hide the shudder that would creep coldly over her. And you will command the springs of life and know the po~ tent berry in whose juice the Immortals dip their spears, that you told me of yes~rday, so to shoofr Death with his own shafts. You will become a very Poke o Moonshine, and will naturally dissolve in these torrefying sunbeams if you dont seek a roof straightway, said Grnndpa Aubichon, rising from his own nest and shaking off the deposit of a tropical hour that had tried to assimilate him with the granite foundations of the place. Saint Aubichon, in an aureole of flower- dust and powder off moths wings! exclaimed Ambrose. Of course we are his thralls. Not obeying the saints here, they bring a hurricane or an earthquake, or some other day of judg-. meat, and explode it round about us. At his service, he a4ded, rising. Come, darling, theres a dream in a drowse waiting to chariot you through siesta! And catching Melicent like a lily-stem, he throned her, perfect and pe- tite, upon his arm. Dontyou see howstrong I am? he said. I absorb vitality from the leaves. Make the most of them, responded Grand- pa Aubichon. Your stock for threescore and ten must be stored in as many days. Times half up. Not a moment more to linger? Its idle talking; I cantl go. I never shall be satiate with this sea, this splendor, this drunkenness of odor. This sweet sunny space has been such bliss, Dr. Aubichon! It has been such rest, such quiet. One of the seasons when the soul grows, said Melicent, laying her cheek against his hair hair whose fine soft darkness alone would have attested the owners organization. It has made me so good, too, he said, laughingly; and tossing her to hisshoulder with one of his old arts of the athlete. I cant imagine the possibility of sin. I am sure I am an angel! I am sure somebody else is. honey, come down, or I. shall think you are going up for good. I cant go up for bad, Grandpa Aubichon. Yes you could, if you left us behind. Ah, wherever I go, I shall yet have her. My rose can never close its petals ! And so the three disappeared under the dense forest screen of shadow and coolness. OSGOODS PREDICAMENT. OSGOOD took a cane-bottomed chair whose edges had given way from the application of boot-soles, cane and umbrella ferules, and studied his predicament. He commenced this necessary study early in the morning in his room, which was in a boarding-house situated in this metropolis. The early carts were tak- ing their way down town through a blue haze, which in the country prefigured a golden day. The milkman, the walk-sweeper, and the rag- picker, were the only creatures moving in Os- goods neighborhood. The time was propitious for meditation and resolve, but Osgoods head was not ready. The still Champagne that he had drank the night before buzzed in his brain. With a glass of it in bis~ hand, under a side gas- light, in the drawing-room of his,Aunt Formica, he had proposed marriage to a hands6me dash- ing girl,and the handsome dashing girl had ac- cepted him. They swallowed the bubbles on the beakers brim, thinking it was the Cup of Life they were drinking from. Neither supposed that the moirment was one of exhilaration or en- thusiasm. Osgood never felt so serious, or so determined to face the music, as he called it, which was the short for a philosophical design to march boldly through life, and shoulder its necessities with a brave spirit and a martial air. Osgood was intelligent, agreeable, and hand- some. lIe had advanced no further into life than to give this impression. He knew no- thing more of himself than that he was intelli- gent, handsome, and plucky. He had no fa- ther or mother, but he had an aunt who had married Mr. Formica; this pair, effete in them- selves, belonged to that mysterious~ class who are always able to get their relatives places un- der Government. When Osgood was eighteen they obtained a place in the Sub-Treasury, which yielded him the income of fifteen hundred dol- lars. Aunt Formica, expected a great deal front him in the way of deportment and dress. The exigencres of his position, she observed, com- pelled him to do as those around him did. Of course he never laid up any of his salary, but he kept out of debt, and in doing this he fulfilled the highest duty that came within his province. His associates were young men who had more money than he, and who expected him to spend as much as they spent. The houses he visited were inhabited by people who took it for grant- ed that all who came in contact with them were as rich as themselves. The Formica interest was large. When he went to Washington with his aunt, he ~vent the rounds of the senators houses and hotels in the way of calls, dinners, and parties. When he went to Boston with her he began his visits at the xight hand of Beacon Street, and branched into the streets behind it, where as good blood abides, though it has nqt the same advantage of the air of the Common. Wherever he went expense was involved, in the way of gloves, bouquets, cards, fees to errand boys~ exchange of civilities in lunches, cigars, ale, brandy, sherry, stage, hack, and car fare, which he bore like a hero. Lily Tree, the girl whom he proposed to mar- ry, belonged to a family of the Formica species. It sailed through society all a-taut with conven- tion, and was comme ilfaut from stem to stern. Lily and Osgood had alwayskuown each other. They passed through. the season of hoop and ball, dancing-school, tableaux, and charades to- gether; sympathized in etteh others embryonic flirtations and were such fast friends that no OSGOODS PREDICAMENT. 53 one ever dreamed of any danger to them from love. But as the wagon that goes from the pow- der-mill in safety innumerable times at last car- ries the keg which explodes it, so Osgood and Lily at last touched the divine spark which threw them out of their old world into one they had not anticipated. This was part of Osgoods predicament. What made him do as he had done? Why had Lily accepted him She would never, he argued, consent to go out of the area which bounded her ideas, and which comprised a small portion of New York, Boston, Washington, and the tour of Europe, which meant a week in London, six months in Paris, and ten days in Rome. Unless he de- scended from the Sub-Treasury, and sought some business, such as making varnish, glue, buttons, soap, sarsaparilla, or sewing machines, could he marry? What shrewdness had he in the place of capital to bring to bear on the requirements of these Yankee callings? How he worried over the prospect which looked so pleasant the night before! Champagne, flowers, light, and per- fume were gone from it. He pitied himself in his helplessness. The thought of Lily deprived of her delicate evening dresses, her diurnal bou- quets, caramels, and her pecunious caprices, was not pleasant. He could not see her in any light that made her so agreeable as in the light that he must certainly cause her to lose. Something practical must be done. Naturally he looked into his pocket-book. There was eighteen dollars in itall the money he had. It was the last day in the month, however, and he was entitled to draw one hun- dred and twenty-five dollars. He shut his pock- et-book and looked into his closet. He found there several pairs of patent-leather boots and a brilliant dressing-gown. Pooh! he said, pee- vishly, and shut the door. He then examined his bureau: in its drawers were many socks, shirts, cravats, four sets of studs and sleeve-buttons, and five scarf-pins. He rattled the studs and buttons thoughtfully; but nothing came of it, and he closed the drawers. His eye then fell on a dress-coat which he had worn for the first time the evening before. He resolved to take the coat back to Wiedenfeldt, his tailor. This re- solve was the nucleus probably of his future un- dertakings. He finished dressing and left the house. Before reaching Wiedenfeldt he pur- chased and drank a bottle of Congress Water. He also stopped at a favorite restaurant and made an excellent breakfast, and came away with a Relampagosa small cigar of superior flavorand three daily papers. His interview .~vith Wiedenfeldt ~vas satisfactory; the coat ~vas taken back4 and when he had settled the matter he felt as if a beginning had been made in a new nnd right direction. That afternoon he drew his pay, and walked up town. The moment he entered his room his predicament fell upon him again, and his spirits sunk. He sat on the edge of his bed, so quiet in his misery that he began to hear the ticking of the watch in his pocket; it associated itself in his mind with the sound and motion of rail- road-cars. He felt himself traveling hundreds of miles away, listening all the while to a rhythmic st,und, which said, Many a mile, many a mile. Why should he not go many a mile, many a mile, in reality? He went out immediately and bought a valise. Afker that his demeanor was settled and tranquil. He then wrote three notesto his chief, his Aunt Formica, and Lily. The first was a note of resignation; the second conveyed the informa- tion to his aunt that he was sick of his place, had thrown it up, and was going out of town for a change of air. He regretted, when he began his note to Lily, that he had not sent her some flowers. A momentary impulse to go and see her stayed his hand; but he remembered that she must be at Mrs. Perches sit-down supper that evening, and resumed writing. He begged her to enjoy herself, and not iftiss him while he was away. He did not know what to write be- sides, but put in a few chaotic expressions which might or might not mean a great deal. While he put a few necessary articles in the~ valise he wondered where he should go, never dropping the thought that he must go some- where. The remainder of his wardrobe, includ- ing the brilliant dressing-gown, he packed in a trunk and locked it. He rang the bell, and when the waiter came up asked for the landlady, Mrs. Semmes. The waiter thought that it ~vas not too late to see her in her own parlor, and lingered, with his hand on his chin and his eyes on the valise. Jem, said Osgood, I have left some boots in the closet, and some shirts in the drawers, which are at your service. The alacrity with which Jem changed his at- titude and expression struck Osgood with a sense of pain. How horribly selfish servants are ! he thought, taking his way down stairs. Mrs. Semmes hoped there was no trouble, and asked him to be seated. He looked at her earnestly; she was the only one to say farewell to. Never had he looked Mrs. Semmes in the face before; he had only seen the hand into which he had placed the price of his board. I came to tell you, Mrs. Semmes, that I am about to leave town for the present. Will you allow my trunk to remain here? If I do not return in a year and a day, break it open. Mrs. Semmes promised to keep the trunk; took some money due her; wondered at his go- ing away at that time of year, and asked him his destination. I think I shall go to Canada, he answer- ed, vaguely. There must be snow there, by the ac- counts. Where shall I go ? he was about to say, but checked himself. If you were going East, she continued, you would find the ground bare enough, espe- cially in the neighborhood of the sea: the sea- winds melt the snow almost as soon as it falls. M HARPERS NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE. I think I will go East, he said~ musingly. Thee has come to us from strange parts, I He sat so long without saying any thing, star- reckon, from thy looks. ing straight before him, that Mrs. Semmes be- Yes, he answered, absently; I needed gan to feel fidgety. She recalled him to the change. present by walking to the window. He started, There has been no change here since the bade her good-by, and retired. Indians went away. If thee will look across the He .tossed about all night in a feverish sleep, road thee can see the ground is strewed with the tormented with dreams which transformed Lily bits of shells from their feasts. into a small child which he was compelled to He went to the window, and again remarked carry in his arms, or furnished his Aunt Formi- to himself, This is the place for me. ca with a long spear, with which she, pursued Could you, he asked, going toward her, him, and was forever on the point of overtaking I him. et me stay with you a while ? Did thee come to the Marsh End station At 8 oclock A.M. he might have been seen by this morning? a detective at the Twenty-seventh Street d~p6t. Yes; my valise is there. A few minutes after he was going through the Thy parents are rich ? tunnel; and, emerging from that, he considered I have none. himself fairly divided from New York. At the Thee has been well cared for, though. first station beyond the State-line of Massachu- I have not left home because of any setts he consulted a map, and concluded to stop Misfortune, he was about to say, but that did at the junction -of the Old Colony Railroad. not seem to be the right word; so he tiled to There he changed the route, and in the evening think of something else to say. She saw his / reached a town which seemed waiting to go embarrassment, and said, quickly, somewhere else, where he passed the night. I never have harbored a stranger; but if The next morning he started on his travels Peter likes, he may take thee. again toward Cape Cod. Five miles beyond a Osgood thanked her so pleasantly that she large village, in a fiat, sterile, gloomy region, he determined he should stay. She asked him his alighted with his baggage, and said, This is name, his age, his place of residence, his busi- the place for me. The train went on, and the ness, and his intentions. Except in regard to ddp6t-master went into his little den without the latter, his answer proved satisfactory; and noticing Osgood.. Several tall school-girls, who when Peter returned at, noon from the distant had come to watch for the train, strolled down shore with a load of sea-weed, she introduced a cross-road, and he was alone. He went to the Osgood as if he were an old acquaintance of end of the platform and surveyed the country. whom Peter was in a state of lanientable igno- Re stood on the edge of a wide plateau along rance. He pushed his hat on the back of his which ran the railroad track. Beyond that a head, shook hands with Osgood, and said, road deviated through dismal fields, by unpaint- Maria, will thee give me my dinner? taking ed houses, large barns, and straggling orchards, no further notice of Osgood till she had placed Below the plateau a wide marsh extended, in- it on the table. It consisted of stewed beans, tersected by crooked creeks, which gnawed into boiled beef, apple-pie, and cheese. Osgood ate the black earth like worms. A rim of sea bor- half a pie, and established himself in Peters dered the tongue of the marsh, but it was too good graces. far oft to add life to the scene. The sedge, giv- Thee will learn that Marias pie-crust beats lag up all hope of being moistened by the salt all, he said. waves, had died in great circles, which looked Thee is ready to consent, said his wife, like mats of gray hair on some pre-Adamite to keep young Osgood a while ? monsters.buried head. I dont know yet, answered Peter. Osgood determined to pursue the windings of Bat after dinner lie harnessed his horse and the road. He plowed the sand for two miles, went to the ddpOt for Osgoods valise, which he and at a sudden turn of the road came upon a carried up stairs and deposited in the spare room. house, with a number of barns and sheds at- He then invited Osgood to take a look at the tached to it. A dog with a stiff tail ran out premises. He wished to make his own investi- from a shed and barked at him, and a pale-faced gations in regard to Osgood without Marias in- woman in a muslin cap appeared at a window tervention. They lingered by the pig-sty, and ~f the house. He knocked at the door: she whilePeter scratched the pigs with a cord-wood opened it. stick, e.achanged views of men and things. Peter Will thee come in ? she asked. saw the capabilities of Osgoods character, and He entered, following her as he would have easily divined the manner of life he had led. followed a ghost. She moved a chair from the lie knew him to be selfish from ignorance, and wall without the least noise, and he dropped because he had early formed the habits which upon it. As he looked at her his identity seemed impose self-indulgence. Something in the young slipping awayseemed to be slipping into an malis bearing won his hearta certain impetu- atmosphere connected with her and her sur- ous simplicity and frankness which made him roundings. She brought him some water which long to he of service to a nature unlike his own. she dipped from a pail near by, and held the Osgood found Peter genial, shrewd, and sad cocoa.nut dipper which contained it to his lips. Such a man he had never met. It seemed to OSGOODS PREDICAMENT. Irim that Peter could set him straight in his own estimation; there was no nonsense about the old man,, and yet he could see deep feeling in his dark, cavernous eyes. The feeling which had oppressed him passed away, and another took its place which contained restoration, and faith in the future. He got into Peters way by at- tempting to help fodder the cattle and slick up th 3 barn. When the work was done, and while Peter fastened the barn-doors with an ox-bow, Osgood looked about him. It was a March aft- ernoon; no wind blew, and no sun shone; but the gray round of the sky, which neither woods nor hills hid from his sight, rolled over him in soft commotion. The reddish, barren fields stretched in their flatness beyond his vision, and the narrow roads of yellow sand ran to nowhere~ The world of God, he thought, he saw for the first time; and, away from the world of men, felt himself a man. He looked so kindly upon Maria when he en- tered the house that she delayed the stream of the tea-kettle which she held over the tea-pot. to admire him. The supper was the dinner cold, with an addition of warm biscuits; and again Osgood ate himself into Peters good graces. The evening was passed in silence. Peter smoked, Maria mended, and Osgood reflected. A violent storm arose in the night; which lasted three days. They were improved by Maria and Peter in overhauling garden-seeds in the garret, and in setting up a leach-tub in the ~vood-hpuse. Osgood. assisted. When he was alone with Ma- ria she talked to him of the boy who was lost at sea, and of the girl who died in childhood; with the hungry eyes of a bereaved mother she looked upon him, and his heart was touched with a new tenderness. When he was alone with Pe- ter the old man sounded the depths of the young mans soul with ivise, pathetic, quaint speech; he ivent over the ground of his own life, which had been passed on the spot where he now was, with the exception of several mackerel voyages, and one in a merchant vessel to some of the southern ports of Europe. But when together Peter and Maria never talked with Osgood on personal matters. Between them a marital si- lence was kept, which was more expressive than the conjugal volubility which ordinarily exists; it proved that they had passed through profound- er experiences. When the storm ceased Peter went to the station for his Boston newspaper, which he read to Maria, who took it afterward and read it over. to herself. Brother Quakers, Peters neighbors, who lived out of sight, dropped in from time to time to exchange a word with Maria, or hold talks outside ivith Peter, with one foot in the rut and the other on the wagon-step. The pres- ent subject of interest, Osgood discovered, was the approaching Quarterly Meeting, and the mackerel fishery. Peter asked him to accom- pany himself and Maria to the town where the meeting. was to bd. They breakfasted at sun- rise, when the day arrived, in full dressPeter in a snuff-colored suit, and Maria in a series of brown nyticlesdress, shawl, and bonnet. They started in good spirits in an open wagon, with an improvised seat for Peter in front. Beyond a belt of pfne woods stood the meeting-house, and a mile beyond the meeting-house lay the town, before a vast bay. Osgood drove alone into the town, and spent.. several hours there. He visited the shops to find some trifle lor Ma- ria, and then went through the town down to the shore. How happy he grew in the pure wind and the gay morning light! The gulls rode over the foaming- wave-crests and dipped into their green walls, and hawks swooped between the steadfast sky and heaving deep. The. sea traveled round and round before his eyes with a mad joy, and tempted him to plunge into it. He wrote his name in the heavy sand with a broken shell, and the water filtered out the let- ters; then he paved it in pebbles with the word Strength. Peter and Maria were waiting for him when he returned to the meeting-house with the ivag- on ~ Thee has been sky-larking, she said. After something for you, he answered, put- ting in her hand a handsome work-basket.. Has thee so much money that thee must waste it on me, Osgood ? But she was pleased with the gift. They rode home amicably. Peter, as a f~yor, allowed Os~ good to drive, while he imparted to Maria sun. dry bits of information gained at the meeting. Mackerel went in and out at Osgoods ears without gaining his attention, till he caught at something Peter said about the Bonita. He list- ened. Three vessels were about to sail from the .town on a mackerel voyage, and the Bonita was one of them. He comprehended that Peter owned half the Bonita, and a plan ~truck him. lie inquired into the subject, and obtained its history. That evening he proposed going on a mackerel voyage, which proposal so fired Peter that lie 4eclared he had a mind to go too; but Maria quenched his enthusiasm by going over the programme of work that must be done at home. She made no opposition to Osgoods go- ing, but set before him in plain terms the hard- ships of such a voyage. He was not to be de- terred, end Peter gave his consent, promising him a small share of the profits. Osgood wrote to his Aunt Formica that night, assuring her that he already felt much better, and that he was about to enter into a new busi- ness, of which she should hear more. He also wrote Lily Tree a minute, lengthy epistle. He described his situation with Peter and Maria; told her how much board he paidtwo dollars and fifty cents a weekand how well he had learned to do chores. He fed the pigs every. day; he wished that she could see how well they. thrived on the diet lately introduced by Peter and himselfa dry mash of boiled potatoes and meal, with an occasional horse-shoe thrown in as a relish. Would she, he wondered, have en- joyed the day that he, Maria, and Peter made 66 HARPERS NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE. soft soap? He mentibned his intended voyage, and asked her if she liked sailors. Could he have the hope, he continued, of her sympathy in his future enterprises, which perhaps ~vould dif- fer from those she had thought of for him? He avowed a change in himself. Would it affect her? He sealed his letters, and began pacing his little room. Writing home had brought his old life near him again; the distance it had come to reach him seemed enormous. It was only a few days ago, he thought, and yet I am so different I lie rolled up his paper window-curtain and softly raised the window. The moon made the landscape look more vast and desolate than it was in the light of day. Under the horizon it revealed a strip of sea which shone as if it were the portal of another ~vorld whose light ~vas re- flected thereon; Osgood felt that he was an im- prisoned soul this side of it. The light gave him an intimation of immortality. Where is Lilys soul ? he asked. Has she any dream beyond the life she is in ? When Lily received Osgoods note she was angry; so was Mrs. Formica when she received hers. An intuition that Osgood repented his rashness touched Lilys pride, and preserved her silence. When the second letter came, she thonght lie had the intention of experimenting ~vith her; a test, she concluded, was unendur- able, not to be submitted to. Should she test him, and proclaim the engagement she medi- tated? it would be a relief to do something. She could not reach him with a letter, for he had gone on a mackerel voyage beyond the limits of the post-office. She decided different- ly according to the light she had. Unlike Os- good, she was chained to the place she was in. She was a1one~ too; her mother ~vas occupied with neuralgia, and her father was out of town half his time, on mysterious agencies which re- ferred to canals. The newspaper reporters at~ Albany were well acquainted with Mr. Trees name while they were putting into short-hand the doings of the Legislature. Mrs. Formica had no suspicion that Lily was the cause of Os- goods disappearance; she would not have re- gretted his absence so much on these grounds, for a match with Lily was not desirable. Within a month Lilys engagement to Mr. Barclay Dodge was announced. He was a young man of fortune, whose father owed his rise in the world to corn starch, and who had made himself known by spending large sums of money on pictures, landscapes mostly, which had been indorsed by the public in exhibi- tions. Mr. Barclay Dodge was happy; he had for more than two years followed Lily through all vicissitudes attendant upon the career of a young girl in society. From an exhilaration the pur- suit had become a desperation. He had never suspected any man of being his rival, and ac- counted for the acquaintance between Lily and Osgood by believing that Lily was related to the Formica family. How shemanaged so sudden~ ly to convince Barclay Dodge that it was safe for him to propose isa mystery which none but a disappointed, contrary ~voman may reveal. He had the usual penetration of his sex in re- gard to such mysteries; he was a man of sense and experience, but he was in love, and when a man is in love he only analyzes himself, and all that he learns is, that his love must be grati- fied. In the ~vhirl of his attentions, and the con- gratulations of her friends, the time passed quick- ly; not so quickly, however, as to avert the plan by which the Fates were to bring her to a knowl- edge of herself. Barclay proposed an immediate marriage. Lily declined the proposal with so much vehe- nience that he dared not insist. He pulled his mustache in rage after he left her, and wondered why he did not insist. By what means, he cogi- tated, could he make her yield her will to his? Her resistance he set. down to coyness; all wo- men had freaks; they were alike in such matters. lie divined after a while that she would let go the lasso at any moment if he proved restive; so he played the submissive to perfection. If she ever saw his eyes flame, or any gesture which contained a threat, he never knew it; but every revelation from him was a revelation to her of herself, and this was to be her education and her punishment. Where is your friend Osgood? he asked once. lie has been away a long time, she an- swered, looking him full in the face, but with rather a stony expression in her eyes. He is your relative ? Oh no~ No? I thought so, always seeing you in the same places. Our families have been acquainted always. Do you think he is handsome ? Yes.. He is too short (Barclay was tall), and his eyes have a wandering, unsettled look. He is following his destiny by them, she answered, bitterly. I wish that I ~ould fol- low mine as a man can. Do you mean that you would like to follow Osgoods eyes ? By no means; I must see destiny by your eyes. The words were pleasant, but the tone was malicious. It made his heart bound as if an invisible foe had come into his atmosphere to do battle with him, and he could do nothing. With the vapors all around, and the breakers on our lee, Not a Light is In the sky, not a light Is on the sea barring the lantern abaft, roared Osgood, from the deck of theachooner Bonito, which was tdss- ing outside Cape Malabar. You may sing tother side of your mouth afore long, brawled back the skipper. We aint fur from the Cormorant Rocks; the wind praps will shove us on the ledge. OSGOODS PREDICAMENT. 57 What, when we are just going home with full barrels ? The mackerel may be briled in Tophet for all we know. The skipper was at the helm; Osgood and he were in the radius of a lantern whieh revealed their faces to each other. Outside of that was pitch darkness; the rain drove in fierce slants against them, and the wind howled all round the sea. The skipper did not look concerned, heither did Osgood; but they were both wondering which would first break over the Bonita, the light of morning or the sea. Them boys are asleep, I spose, wet to the bone ? the skipper yelled. Yes. Let em sleep; there aint a lanyard loose. What time must it be ? Hard onto leven. My old womans turned in long afore this, she has; allus goes to bed on the stroke o nine. She has thought of you to-night ? She has give me a prayer or so; shes the strictest kind. Now Ill luff, there is a lull comm; peskiest storms that have lulls in em. You dont hear a swashing to a distance now? Hark! A sound, not of wind nor sea, approached thema rapid, rushing, cutting sound. Up with the helm I shrieked the skipper to himselt~ God Almighty, she is down on us Osgood leaped up. The bowsprit of a large ship was over him; he threw up his arms in- stinctively and caught at something; he felt his feet drawing over the skippers head, and that he thumped it with his boots. He knew no more. The great ship crushed and plowed the Bonita into the waves as easily as a plow buries in the sod the stubble of the corn-field. No- thing signaled her destruction except the ex- clamation of the skipper; nothing remained in the wide sea to show it. Her timbers and the sleeping crew ~vent to the bottom together. Morning dawned on the wild scene, revealing no floating spar, no rib of boat, no stave of tub or barrel, no sailors hat, no remnant of sail, no shred of clothing; the jaws of the sea had closed over all. The ship, a Liverpool liner, driven out of her course by the storm, cruised round the spot for a few hours, and then ~vent on her way, taking Osgood with her. He had clung to the folds of the forward sail; and there lie was found with his left wrist dislocated, his body strained and sore, and his mind wandering. He was no romantic sight with his red flannel shirt, fishy trowsers, cowhide boots, and hands pickled in brine. Still the ships surgeon took to him, and found, when Osgood came to himself, that lie had taken to a gentleman. He lent him a suit of customary black, and introduced him to his acquaintances. Osgood would have enjoyed the voyage acrossthe Atlantic but for the horror which had fallen on his mind from tbe catas- trophe of the Bonita. How old are you? the surgeon asked him. - About the first of March I was twenty- three; since then I have grown so old I have lost the reckoning. Ill have to give you quinine, my. boy. Give me some of the tincture of Lethe. It is of no use to one to forget; dont be soft. Let us reason together, Sawbones. The Doctor agreed, and Osgood began his story with, Poor Peter, and finished it with asking, Do you think I love her ? Ill bet a guinea, said the Doctor, that she is married. She isnt, replied Osgood, indignantly. I am sure that she is engaged, as you call it, to somebody besides yourself. I know better. What do you propose doing when you get home ? What can I do with thirty dollars, which I left with Peter by-the-way ? We shall see what we shall see when we come face to face with Aunt Formica. I in- tend going the rounds with you in New York. I am a student. lie carried Osgood to his country-home be- yond Liverpool, where they staid till the ship ~vas ready to sail again. He amused his mother and sisters with stories of Osgoods adventures on sea and land, and represented him in the light of a Jarleys wax-works hero, till he was fairly cured of his melancholy. Five months from the day on which he left New York Osgood returned, and stood on his Aunt Formicas door - steps with Dr. Black. They looked like a pair of Englishmen. Both had - shiny, red noses, shiny, hard, narrow- brimmed hats, and shiny, narrow-toed boots, and the nap had brushed off their Coats. Osgood looked into the familiar area with emotion, and the Doctor looked at the windows with curiosity. They must be out of town, he said; the house has been put in brown hollands. But Osgood knew the habits of his aunt knew that from the first of July till the first of October the house was put on an out-of-town footing; and that she skirmished between city and country, or watering-place. The bell was answered by a servant he did not know. I wish to see Mrs. Formica, he said, brush- ing past her, and entering the dark parlor. Dr. Black and friend say. Mrs. Formica came in a moment after with a slight air of amazement, which increased to as- tonishment when she saw her nephew. She gave a little yelp as he embraced her, and said, Where have you been ? To Cape Cod, and to Europe. I have been shipwrecked, auntthat is, I lost my mackerel venture, and have been taken care of by my no- ble friend, Dr. Black. Aunt Formica grew pale at the ~vord ship- wrecked, and turned to Dr. Black. Some- 58 HARPERS NEW MONTHLY MA4IAZINE. thing in his face made her extend her hand and give him a warm welcome. Black may stay here while he is in port, maynt he? He will amuse you with yarns about me. Of course, she replied. Now tell me the whole story. Between Osgood and the. Doctor it was re- lated. Why did you ever go from me ? she asked, wiping away a real tear. I believe, aunt, I shall keep up the business of goingit suits me. I can never live through your conventional cramps. She did not think it prudent to combat him just then; but made a mental memorandum that something must be done that would change his foolish resolution. A plan developed at din- ner that evening. I had a note yesterday from Mrs. Senator Conch, said Mrs. Formica. She will be in Saratoga this week, and begs me to meet her there. Formica and I have been talking it over, ~Osgood, and we think that it will be pleasant for Dr. Black and you to go up for a week. You will go, Doctor ? Thank you, Madam, provided Osgood is not averse. Any of our set there ? Osgood asked. The Trees went up last Saturday with Bar- clay Dodge. They are making an extensive tour this year. Whats Barclay Dodge along for? He is engaged to Lily Tree. Ah ! said Osgood, looking at the Doctor, who could not help giving him a malicious gri- mace. How long since? Its a capital match, aint it ? The engagement must have been announced soon after you left.: This reply put Osgood in a brown study. What impulse, he mused, had prompted Lily to give herself to Barclay Dodge? Would he have done so? Dr. Black commented on Osgoods face, and considered himself in a fair way to make studies. As far as money goes, continued Mrs. Formica, it may be called a good match; but certainly not as far as family goes. Family! echoed Dr. Black, softly. His father was a tradesman, explained Mr. Formica, while Lily can go hack to her great-grandfather before trade need be mention- ed. Old Mr. Trees father, remarked his wife, was a brigadier-general in the Revolution. He was a drover, for all that, said Os- good. Mrs. Formica changed the theme, and talked of Saratoga. Well go, Osgood said, crossly; but I must first go to my tailor. Mrs. Formica held a private conversation with him after dinner, gave him a check, and told him not to worry about the future: she had a plan in view. Plans go by contraries with me, aunt. - You owe it to me not to be perverse. I cant pay any debt. Previous to going to bed Dr. Black and Os- good smoked several cigars. You strike me, said the Doctor, as grow- ing to the dramatic just now. One event runs into another with monstrous fapidity among you Americans. How you differ from the En- glish! How is it that you catch fortune by the hair so ? We are passionate and quick-witted. And then you repudiate with ease. Bah! you imitate Sydney Smith. I did not mean in the sense of State bonds precisely. I think, Osgood groaned, that I begin to feel like a snob again. What shall I do to be saved? Go on in the groove that is making for you. Ill stand by and be the chorus. When I hear thy plaints of misery I will let fall the tear; but remember that laws determine even the fates. Bosh! Except a dispute between the Doctor and Os- good concerning a slouched hat, which the Doc- tor would not wear, the party succeeded in starting and arriving amicably at the Union in Saratoga. In a few hours Mrs. Formica knew who was there. The Trees were at the Union. Mrs. Senator Conch had taken a cottage; but the Senator himself had stopped at Albany for a day to confer with the. Governor. Old Madam Funchal of Philadelphia was at Congress Hall, with her train, and Mrs. Romeo Pipps Bovis and husband, from Boston. All her friends were round her; that is, the traveling set she was in the habit of meeting; and her spirits rose to the occasion. These particulars she de- tailed, in a white muslin morning-dress, to Os- good, who, dressed in a new cream-colored suit, lounged in the doorway of a small parlor off the hall. He shouldered round just in time to come face to face. with Lily Tree, who was passing on the arm of Barclay Dodge. She stopped, .of course, to shake hands with Mrs. Formica, whose apparently warm .kiss fell on the edge of a braid of her chestnut hair with the u eight and coldness of a snow-flake. Her face settled into rigidity when she turned to speak to Osgood, and, like a transparent boy, he looked, with all the earnestness his gray eyes were capable of, straight into hers. Aunt Formica and Barclay read a story at once upon the text his counte- nance furnished; but they both made the mis- take of believing that Lily had rejected him. Lily was too much occupied in managing her own feelings to divine Osgoods. The impera- tive necessity of concealment, which all tutored women feel, governed her. She laughed a great deal, though nobody said a witty thing, and kept her eyes going between Mrs. Formica and Barclay with a steadiness which equaled the movements of the wax women in the Broadway shop windows. Mr. Formica and Dr. Black added themselves to the party, and the relief of OSGOODS P~REDIOAMENT. an introduction to the Doctor came to Lily. She approached him, and his honest face in- duced her to skirmish lightly with him; but not & word did he utter of the whys and wherefores of his being with Osgood. He would not, at any rate, extend his self-elected office of chorus so far as to include her. He felt a dislike to- ivard her. She was too thin, he thought; there was an air of wear and tear about her which was not pleasant. He felt, too, that she knew more than Osgood; and a woman, in his estimation, should never be the intellectual superior of a man she might make choice of. But the Doc- tor was an Englishman; his ideas of women had been developed by the cynical Thnckeray and the material Dickens. There was a line between the two classes of women he only believed to existthe bad capable woman and the good foolish womanwhich could never be crossed by one or the other. The elements which go to make up a man, of good and evil mixed, never enter into the composition of the women of En- glishmen of the present time. It is possible that Lily discovered Dr. Blacks impression: she discovered it so nearly that she was certain Osgood had talked of her with him. Why had he? she wondered. In a few minutes the party fell apart as natu- rally as it had come together. Lily went on her walk with Barclay; after which she retired to dress for luncheon, but instead of appearing thereat kept her room till evening. Osgood avoided every body; he was tormented with an idea that Lily had suffered. There was no i~eason for his thinking so; he derived the idea from reasoning with himself reasoning which meeting with her had put in play.. Itt the evening he went to the drawing-room, and waited till he saw her come in. Barclay, who was waiting too, darted toward her, but Osgood reached her first. When Barclay saw Lily take the arm which Osgood offered her, he turned away; but changing his mind again went up to them. Osgood, he said, in a frank voice, you have not congratulated me on my engagement to your friend Lily. Talk of heroes and martyrs; was not Lily both, at that moment, standing between these two men, with her hair dressed by a barber, and wearing a pale blue silk? She eyed with a dainty air a littlebouquet she held in her hand, of tea-roses and geraniums, and applied it to her nose with great delibera- tion. She felt an impetus from Osgoods arm. He had not answered Barclay, but was dragging her decorously out of the drawing-room. When they were alone he spoke to her. I have faced death since I saw you. I have grown a man; but until now, I did not know that I loved you. Which man do you belong to? I have faced life since I saw you, she an- swered, in a silvery voice, and I belong to Barclay. Dodge. Let us go back. 59 She tossed her bouquet over the railing of the veranda with a vindictive smile which would have astonished Osgood had he seen it. Barclay was on the threshold; he looked at Lily and missed the bouquet; it was not in Os.. goods button-holewhat could she have done with it? He looked at Osgood, and saw that his teeth were set with a passion which he could understaxid. Lily sat down in the nearest chair, and the young men moved away together. There is no need of any nonsense between us, said Osgood;. I was under a wrong im- pression regardingyour engagement. I do offer my congratulations. Thank you, said Barclay, dubiously. And then they looked at each other with mad eyes. What a relief it would have been if they could have fought to the death! Osgood left Barclay abruptly, and sought his Aunt Formica. Aunt ! he said, in a mild voice, you need not ask Conch to blow any horn for me. I am going to sea. You will be better when she is marrIed, she answered, significantly. I intend to before that. Your surmise is incorrect. You do not know that I ran away from Lily, as well as from you and the Sub- Treasury. What do you mean I I. offered myself to her; she accepted me, and on the strength of it I left her immediately. What do you think of me ? She is a little wretch. Did you care for her very much? I thought she couldnt make a poor man a good wife, qfter I had asked her to be such. And I thought a poor man wouldnt be a good husband. It ~vas th~e height of foolishness in both of you. It is most unwise for two people who have had luxuries separately to join and give them up. Luxuries l I wish you knew Peter and Ma- na. Osgood, you are morbid. Now, aunt, hear me. I am resolved to choose my own life; you must let me go. Whatever way I go, I shall not disgrace you. Formica may give me a sailors outfit, if he chooses. Meantime let us enjoy ourselves for the remainder of the week. Notwithstanding she saw that he was determ- ined, she applied to Senator Couch for a place, and he promised her one for Osgood in a de- partment at Washington. Wh& n she told Os- good of it, he deigned no reply; but shook his head so fiercely that she forebore to trouble him. Every day that he saw Lily she learned his nature by the contrast Barclay offered; she also learned to doubt herself. She never had been worthy of Osgood; it was fit that she should marry Barclay. She doubted whethershe could keep up the strain, which she knew Osgoods love would impose upon her, of self-abnegation, self-denial, isolation, and independence. She 60 HARPERS NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE. was not sure that she did not prefer enervation with Barclay to action with Osgood. Barclay watched them both. Jealousy gnawed his soul, not because he doubted Osgood, but because he had a suspicion that Lily once felt an interest in Osgood, which might be on the point of awak- ening. He tried experiments upon her feelings, pinched them, tore them up by the roots, ex- tracted them with wrenches of his will, applied slow fire; but he learned nothing. His motive was so palpable to Osgood that he more than once felt on the point of knocking him down, and had he seen any encouraging sign from Lily he ~~ould have done it. He sometimes sighed over Barclays failure, hateful as his conduct ~vas. Through the torture which Barclay applied to her she saw the passion which tortured him. Could a woman have been quailed into love she would have been at his feet; for he broke loose from his feigned submission and savagely de- manded an equal return of his love. Then came the full measure of her punishment. She~ was incapable of rising to the strength, height, and abandon of Barclays love. She was just as unworthy of him as she was of Osgood. How she hated herself! Somehow she heard. that Osgood was going to sea. It is probable that Aunt Formicas feminine malice directed the disclosure to her ears. She staggered Dr. Black a moment after she heard the report by asking if it was true. It is, he answered, with dignity, though inwardly scared. She asked no other question of him, but snapped her fan together and walked away. Lily does not want you to go to sea, he said, when next hc saw Osgood. Osgood. blew a ring of cigar smoke into the air and watched its disappearance. If wedding rings would onl/disappear that way l said the Doctor. Osgood blew another. Include engagement rings, he said. One did vanish, replied the Doctor, slyly. I do not believe so. I swear she wears two this moment. He left the Doctor, shut himself in his room, and wrote a long letter to Peter about himself~ Lily, .and Barclay, and posted it. Peter will understand me, he thought; and more than that, he will understand Lily. The last day of the FOrmicas stay in Saratoga came. Osgood and Dr. Black appeared in trav- eling costume. Lily saw them enter the break- fast-room, and followed them with her father. As she passed their chairs she asked, Do you go to-day? Osgood bowed. Dr. Black en- gaged Mr. Tree in making a remark. Why do you go ? she asked. Because Barclay stays, he whispered. She turned a fiery red and passed on. He looked across the table once and met her eyes. She thought they said Farewell. A wild wish rose in her heart which compelled all her nature to give way to it, to speak to him once more; to see him alone, and force him to tell her if he loved her. She resolved to find him somewhere, at all hazards. Dr. Black watched her also. His comment was, that she was coming to a crisis, and was beautifully following out the laws which governed her sex. Why cant they be some thing without hysterics? he lamented. Os- good will break down if he is ~ot got away. He mechanic4ly turned back his wristhands. Lily waited in an ante-room, whosedoor Os- good must pass on his way out, and when he came, beckoned to him. Say your farewell to me as you feel it, she said, her eyes in a blaze. I can not. You shall. Her eyes and her voice threw him into a tu- mult; had he followed the desire which assailed him, he would have taken her in his arms and carried her off. As it was, he looked at her with a far-off look, as if he were calling some one to his aid. Osgood, Osgood! she cried. Lily! She wrung her hands. Lily! he said again. No, no, you need not speak; you may go. Both of them gained a victory. After I have gone, he said, if you think it proper, will you visit Peter and Maria ? Peter and Maria? The friends I found when I left you, who helped me to find a better selfa self that at last finds you. I will go. To-morrow, then, I will write you of them. lie was gone. In a few days she received a letter which con- tained the narrative of his sojourn with Peter and Maria, and a letter of introduction to them. She showed the letter to Barclay. Shall you meet him there ? She gave him no answer. On what terms are you with yourself? he continued. To answer candidly, bad terms. Could you marry that beggar on better ? Alas! no. Tell me, are you satisfiedwith yourchoice? She looked so irresolute that he trembled and was sorry that he had asked the question. Her better angel took wings, however, and she laid her hand on his shoulder, saying, I make no other. So she went on her travels with Barclay in her train, and Osgood went on a voyage in the Stormy Petrel as third mate. When autumn came, and the travelers had returned to town, Lily grew miserable. One day she told Barclay that she wanted to read him a poem. He com- posed himself to listen, and she read The I~al- ace of Art. What is it that will take away my sin, And save me lest I die? she repeated. Barclay, she entreated, let me throw INSECTS INJURIOUS TO THE VINE. 61 your royal robes away, and go to those friends of Osgoods, where I may learn that I am either worthy of you or of him. A stormy scene ensued. He would neither allow her to go, he said, nor would he give her back her promise to him. But she was firm, and said that she must go. His imprecations and his tears agitated her, but did not shake her resolution. She had a battle with her father also when she mentioned the subject, but she triumphed over him so far as to make him prom- ise to accompany her. She sent the letter of introduction to Peter, and received a pithy reply from him. He advised her to come. With Peter and Maria she learned why Osgood wished her to visit them. She left them with a request that they should allow her to return whenever she should wish. She found Barclay sullen and nnhappy; but in spite of himself she convinced him that they were not in~nded for each other. It was a work to persuade him to the contrary; but at last they parted not as foes but friends. When the engagement was annulled she took pains to ascertain from the owners of the Stormy Petrel what time she was expected home, and before the date of her arrival she went on a visit to Peter and Maria. There she studied the Marine List till she saw that the Stormy Petrel was in port. She said nothing of the fact to Peter; but as he read the Marine List too, he found it out for himself. He went away in his wagon a few mornings aft- erward, and when he returned Osgood was be- side him. Thee is as white as a ghost, Lily, said Maria, after a few minutes. Osgood put his arm round her, and they kissed each other. Peter pushed his hat on the back of his head, and kissed Maria, and said, Give me my dinner. INSECTS INJURIOUS TO THE VINE. Wine is grapes, and grapes are wood; The wooden board yields wine as goed. It is but a deeper glance Into Natures countesance. All is plain to him who seeth Lift the veil and look beneath, And behold, the wise man saith, Miracles, if you have faith. FAUST. SO sung Mephistopheles in Auersbachs cel- lar, when he drew the magic wine for the students from the wooden table. This super- natural creation of the poet is notmore marvel- ous than is performing before us during any hour of the summer months when the vine is eliminating from Natures laboratory the results of the vintagewhose ether and aroma are still unsolved enigmas to men of sciencewhose growth and fruit set mens judgments and pre- judices at utter defiance, crowning hopes where there were none, and causing disappointments where all was joyous anticipation of a flowing vintage. Vor~. XXVII.No. 157.B Is there any thing in Natures floral kingdom which can so gladden the eye as well as the heart as does the Vine? How beautiful it is! Poets have sung of it, limners painted it, and sculptors chiseled it in marble; and yet not one of them can fully convey its entire charm to the admiring senses. There is something so grace- ful in those long tendrils, like soft, daiRty fin- gers clasping in friendship the summer airthe rich, dazzling green of the leaves, which shim- mers off from them in rays of light, falling around and about them as if they had shadows of light all their own, every indenture and vein having its hues of beauty distinctly marked, and radiant with circulating bloodtheir motion so bending and caressing to the soft air of the morning, so quiet and full of repose as the night-dews fall upon them in refreshing vapors; then, again, the tender green of the young grape swelling into richer hue and size as summer nourishes and feeds. their gathering strength, until maturity and perfection consummate the whole to the eye and heart of man as he lingers beside his vineyard; every sense is refreshed, is gladdened, by the beauty which environs him; and if the weight and size of his bunches fall short of those of which Scripture tells us, yet his vineyard may make up in quality what it loses in quantity. There is another peculiarity which the vine possesses that of assimilating every thing around it into its own properties. The quali- ties of the soil which surrounds it become the basis of its life-blood; the fluids with which it is watered deteriorate or excite leaf or fruit its their qisalities may influence; the very air is re- freshing or obnoxious as the locality may indi- cate. These peculiarities few men take into consideration when they plant a vineyard, and fewer still when they propose to make wine, that gladdens the Ileart of man. To illustrate this more fully let me tell you what I have seen myself. A physician, a man of great skill and reputation, possessed a grape- vine running over his office. Nothing in vine- life was more luxuriant in beauty, richness, and flavor than this little vineyard, and nothing more cheering to the owners ears than to praise the flavor of his grapes. Many a poor invalid was refreshed with a bunch as he lingered in the good doctors office. It so fortuned, as the old chroniclers say, that he heard or read that blood was a great improver to the vine; and so all his patients who needed the application were required to give their share to the doctor~ s vine. Time went on, and the next summer was to ex- hibit what plebeian fluids would produce mixed with the vines own gentle blood. And so it did. But, alas! contrary to the expectations of every one. Leaf there was in plenty, stem and wood; but the fruit was poor and very obnox- ious to the taste. From that day to this, this once famous vine has never recovered the de- teriorating effects of human admixture. In the leafy month of June its shade is a luxury, but no one cares for the fruit in September. A

INSECTS INJURIOUS TO THE VINE. 61 your royal robes away, and go to those friends of Osgoods, where I may learn that I am either worthy of you or of him. A stormy scene ensued. He would neither allow her to go, he said, nor would he give her back her promise to him. But she was firm, and said that she must go. His imprecations and his tears agitated her, but did not shake her resolution. She had a battle with her father also when she mentioned the subject, but she triumphed over him so far as to make him prom- ise to accompany her. She sent the letter of introduction to Peter, and received a pithy reply from him. He advised her to come. With Peter and Maria she learned why Osgood wished her to visit them. She left them with a request that they should allow her to return whenever she should wish. She found Barclay sullen and nnhappy; but in spite of himself she convinced him that they were not in~nded for each other. It was a work to persuade him to the contrary; but at last they parted not as foes but friends. When the engagement was annulled she took pains to ascertain from the owners of the Stormy Petrel what time she was expected home, and before the date of her arrival she went on a visit to Peter and Maria. There she studied the Marine List till she saw that the Stormy Petrel was in port. She said nothing of the fact to Peter; but as he read the Marine List too, he found it out for himself. He went away in his wagon a few mornings aft- erward, and when he returned Osgood was be- side him. Thee is as white as a ghost, Lily, said Maria, after a few minutes. Osgood put his arm round her, and they kissed each other. Peter pushed his hat on the back of his head, and kissed Maria, and said, Give me my dinner. INSECTS INJURIOUS TO THE VINE. Wine is grapes, and grapes are wood; The wooden board yields wine as goed. It is but a deeper glance Into Natures countesance. All is plain to him who seeth Lift the veil and look beneath, And behold, the wise man saith, Miracles, if you have faith. FAUST. SO sung Mephistopheles in Auersbachs cel- lar, when he drew the magic wine for the students from the wooden table. This super- natural creation of the poet is notmore marvel- ous than is performing before us during any hour of the summer months when the vine is eliminating from Natures laboratory the results of the vintagewhose ether and aroma are still unsolved enigmas to men of sciencewhose growth and fruit set mens judgments and pre- judices at utter defiance, crowning hopes where there were none, and causing disappointments where all was joyous anticipation of a flowing vintage. Vor~. XXVII.No. 157.B Is there any thing in Natures floral kingdom which can so gladden the eye as well as the heart as does the Vine? How beautiful it is! Poets have sung of it, limners painted it, and sculptors chiseled it in marble; and yet not one of them can fully convey its entire charm to the admiring senses. There is something so grace- ful in those long tendrils, like soft, daiRty fin- gers clasping in friendship the summer airthe rich, dazzling green of the leaves, which shim- mers off from them in rays of light, falling around and about them as if they had shadows of light all their own, every indenture and vein having its hues of beauty distinctly marked, and radiant with circulating bloodtheir motion so bending and caressing to the soft air of the morning, so quiet and full of repose as the night-dews fall upon them in refreshing vapors; then, again, the tender green of the young grape swelling into richer hue and size as summer nourishes and feeds. their gathering strength, until maturity and perfection consummate the whole to the eye and heart of man as he lingers beside his vineyard; every sense is refreshed, is gladdened, by the beauty which environs him; and if the weight and size of his bunches fall short of those of which Scripture tells us, yet his vineyard may make up in quality what it loses in quantity. There is another peculiarity which the vine possesses that of assimilating every thing around it into its own properties. The quali- ties of the soil which surrounds it become the basis of its life-blood; the fluids with which it is watered deteriorate or excite leaf or fruit its their qisalities may influence; the very air is re- freshing or obnoxious as the locality may indi- cate. These peculiarities few men take into consideration when they plant a vineyard, and fewer still when they propose to make wine, that gladdens the Ileart of man. To illustrate this more fully let me tell you what I have seen myself. A physician, a man of great skill and reputation, possessed a grape- vine running over his office. Nothing in vine- life was more luxuriant in beauty, richness, and flavor than this little vineyard, and nothing more cheering to the owners ears than to praise the flavor of his grapes. Many a poor invalid was refreshed with a bunch as he lingered in the good doctors office. It so fortuned, as the old chroniclers say, that he heard or read that blood was a great improver to the vine; and so all his patients who needed the application were required to give their share to the doctor~ s vine. Time went on, and the next summer was to ex- hibit what plebeian fluids would produce mixed with the vines own gentle blood. And so it did. But, alas! contrary to the expectations of every one. Leaf there was in plenty, stem and wood; but the fruit was poor and very obnox- ious to the taste. From that day to this, this once famous vine has never recovered the de- teriorating effects of human admixture. In the leafy month of June its shade is a luxury, but no one cares for the fruit in September. A 62 HARPERS NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE. horrible brackish taste clings to the tongue after eating the grapes. Says its present owner, Even the birds turn up their bills at them. We would naturally conclude here that Imag- ination might be exercising her spells, but it is not so. The present proprietors knew nothing of the doctors experiment. It fully illustrates that there are mysteries in the laboratory of Nature which may be very successful in some localities, and utterly ruinous to mens hopes in another, requiring from them that practice which experience al6ne can give or justify. Now that we are planting vineyards, and starting in the race with other nations in pro- ducing something which may gladden, not blacken, the hearts and stupefy the heads, it is to be hopednot mixtures of drugs labeled and sold as vintages from other sunny landsshould we not take these peculiarities of the vine into ~nsideration, and humor this beautiful offspring of Nature in all its requirements? We have climate and we have soil, and all we require is judgment and industry. Ifa vine is planted in a wet, damp, acrid earth, you must expect a watery, sour vintage, and your must, as the vintners call it, ~vill soon convince you of labor lost, time and money uselessly expended. The way a trellis faces on which a vine clings will change the qualities of a grape; how much more the earth from which it draws its sustenance, or t.he air which fills its lungs? Probably among all the blessings appertain- ?ng to the comfort of man which a Divine Prov- idence has bestowed, not one administers more (lireetly than this in its results. That man must and will have something wherewith to gladden his heart, has been most fully demonstrated since the day Father Noah carried the experi- ruent too far until this present year of grace. How necessary, philanthropic, and charitable it is, then, that this should be pure, light, and un- adulteratedmaking the blood glad, not render- ing the heart sad or the head insane; and he who gives a light, pure drink to his countrymen deserves all the ancients decreed him to be ~xnsidered a benefactor to his race. It is no use to shirk the question. Like every other truth, the Master recognized it in His first miracle at the wedding in Cana; and man ignores him- self when he sets his nature at defiance. The race which should r~w be run is who shall do his neighbor the greatest justice in the produce of his vineyardso often the symbol of prosperi- ty and happiness in that holy book; so often the recipient of our Fathers blessings when giving man the result of his labors. The effort attending the culture of the grape among us, so far, has resulted in much success; adding to the luxuries of life and the employ- ment of additional workers, who would other- wise have stood idle in the market-places of the Old World until the day was, for them, far spent. But there is much yet to learn. There are no royal roads toward the culture of a vineyard. They are as well beaten out as those to the Temple of Knowledge; and he who listens to Nature, and follows her slow but sure dictates, -will be the greatest benefactor to his race, and will have the more success with his vineyard. In this, as i~s all other things, we are ambitious to reach the highest pinnacle on the wings of the eagle, instead of following the path around the Mount of Success. We wish to accomplish in a few years that which it has taken other na- tions many centuries to attain. Look at the vineyards of France. How far they extend back into the Past; what tales they can tell of joust and troubadour; and no man will deny that they have done great service to their country, in the light and refreshing beverages so common among the working- classes. We must have time for Thoee banks which bear the vine, And hills all rich with blossomed trees, And fields which promise corn and wine. There can be no doubt of ultimate success, al- though it may be attended with del*y, when we may speak of orsr vintages standing the test of time. But for this consummation we must study the secrets of Nature, and not plant a vine where she has decreed that only an oak or a pine shall grow. She is inexorable, and her dictates must be heeded to give us any thing like success. Bacon has left us a whole volume of excellent advice in one pithy sentence: Na- ture is only conquered by ol*ying her. This is not the place, however, to discuss agricultural eccentricities. Grapes will always be capital eat- ing, no doubt, even if they can not be made to gladden mens hearts in a liquid state. But the vine has other despoilers than mans ignorance and prejudices; and I propose to show you a few of those from among the host who love it as a dwelling-place and a home of de- lights. The insect kingdom, like our own, exhibits a great preference for the vine. Scarcely any herb- ivorous member of it in the larva state will re- ject the vine as food. Even the absolutely ex- acting silk-worm will sometimes prefer it to its own proper treethe mulberry; and the splen- did moths we have, belonging to the maple, oak, and hickory, can be raised with great success upon it. The strange but very beautiful Lenia and the splendid Regalis will become vine-eaters alone, and give splendid specimens. This I men- tion for the aid of collectors. We will now turn to some of those strictly appointed to the vine. They are numerous enough, so that there is no difficulty in choosing. We will commence at the root and go up. I have befd~te me a pretty moth, the zEgeria labruscathe Root-Borer of the Wild Vine. It is marked in some cabinets as ~E. polistcc- forinis. I find a marked difference between the two, although they may be varieties of the same insect. The habits of the first I know; those of the other may be presumed frosn analogy, if they are not the same. The zEgeria labrusca has been introduced into vineyards from using the wild grapes of the country for grafting Rur- poses. It has beea said that the scuppernong SS INSECTS INJURIOUS TO THE VINE. 63 not touched by this insect or other borers. This is an error, as the wild vines in the Middle States will amply prove. It is a great lover of warmth, and has not as yet strayed in numbers very far north or east, although in dry seasons they are frequently numerous. There is one of this fain- ily, the Ompliale of Florida, one of the most beautiful insects known. This ~geria is of a dark rich brown color, shaded and banded with yellow. The thorax, shoulder-covers, and head are all edged with yellow; the feelers, legs, and antenute are of the same color. The fore- wings are a brown dusky mixture; the hind- wings are as transparent as glass, beautifully veined and edged with black. The female has two bright orange tufts on each side of her tail; the male has fourtwo on each sidethe mid- dle longer than those on the outside. They are larger than the generality of their family. The mother moth deposits her eggs, just where the soil touches the trunk of the vine, in the month of June, and according to the weather they are hatched. The caterpillars are pellucid and white. They commence boring their way up- ward, and when they are numerous the vines will be soon worth very little. When full-grown they measure very nearly two inches. They change their skins four times, and when ready to transform they collect shreds of bark, small fragments of wood, and dry stems, all of .which they gum together and spin over with silk, al- ways being sure to place themselves snugly away under the fibrous bark hanging in strips around the trunk of the vine. You may find them easily in the fall by loosening the bark, the small silk- en patches extending from the crevices will soon inform you where to find this enemy. The chrysalis is of a delicate brown. It has many points on the rings, which enable it to push its way out of the cocoon the easier. The tongue- case is always very much exposed, bent either on one side or the other. They are easily kept un- der subjection if watched for a season and taken in time. They do not all come forth at once, bnt at different times, so that they are seen fly- ing around the vines from June to October. Pelidnota punctata is a beautiful and large beetle, the Pelidnota punctata of Harris. It be- longs to the family of Rutiliansthe link con- necting the famous tribe of Scarabceus and the Mielatontliad , or May-Chafers They be- long to the wood-eaters in a larva state, and live on the leaves of the vine in the imago. The mother beetle deposits her eggs in the earth, near decayed wood, and in old stumps of trees; so if your arbors and trellis-work become de- cayed, and you allow the evil to remain, you must remember you are preparing the home for the young of this pretty insect. The grub is of a pale yellowish hue, with a dark head and very strong jaws. The tail is very much larger than the head, resembling the larvu of the May bee- tles. The last ring is thick and horny in ap- pearance, and of a brownish color. I can af- firm, almost with certainty, that they live more than one season in the larva state. I have dis covered them in old wood, fully grown, and hav- ing to undergo but one change of skin, as early as March, and they did not go into pupa until the next fall. ~ The beetle is long-lived. I have before me one which I found in the month of April four feet under ground, where a friend was renewing an old post in his garden. When first brought to light it was the prettie~ thing conceivable. A very delicate pearly green, with the black spots very brilliant; the thorax sev- eral shades darker, the legs and abdomen splen- didly bronzed. It was torpid, and I supposed dead, but the warm sun and air soon revived it. It was the largest specimen I ever saw. I placed some of the sand in which it was found in an inkstand, the body of which was in the form of a bee, the wings composing the oover. Here this pretty creature lived many months, bearing patiently all the various experiments I made on the power of hearing they possess, which con- firmed me in my theory of this sense being only conveyed to them through the shock given to the nervous system. You might call with a fire trumpet and receive no recognition, but tap with a pencil ever so gently, the earth would begin to move, and out would come the pretty green- ish head. It lived upon apples, grapes, or any fruit in season. Twice during the week I would give it a cold bath by dropping water from the tips of my fingers. The sand was always kept moist. If left to become dry it would work up to the surface, raise the cover with its back, and walk forth to remind you of your negligence. It was a celebrated personage in its day, and the inquiry, when I was met by friends, was usually, How is the beetle? I was anxious to test the length of life they possess; but this died in the course of the twen- tieth month I had enjoyed its companionship. It must have been at least a year old when I got it; so we have so much of a data. It had been exhibiting some of its odd tricks to our friends such as feigning deathwhen the table was struck. Coming to, softly, peering around, and then gathering itself up, it would scamper over the side of its domicile, and hide away under the sand; There waiting a while, and feeling no other movement, it would cunningly come up, loth to relinquish the apple feast, peer around, come to the edge of the china rim, and tum- ble itself over, knowing ehis would be event- ually the way it would reach its repast, as it could not walk down so smooth a surface. Then to watch it like a hound tracking the apple over the table from its perfume, and many other in- etiactive maninuvres strange to contemplates After this performance it was left uncovered; and in the morning nothing remained of my little pet but its beautiful wing-covers and its legs. A mouse had devoured it from the traces discovered around the inkstand. They are very fall of instinct, and will well repay any one for their care, if only to look at. The antenute are what is termed larnellatce, or lamellatefolding like a fan when not in use. The folds of this fan represent the most beauti 64 HARPERS NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE. ful golden leaves in the most minute construc- When ready to go into cocoon they commence tion. The veins are as distinct as veins of gold. by drawing the tendril around them, gluing the The jaws are firm and strong, and leave ridges cocoons on to the stem on one side. They arc in an apple as deep as one of your nails could tough, oval, and rough. You would take them form; consequently the depredation must he to be only punctures in ~he hark. The chrysa- great when many are devouring the leaves on a lis is a delicate brown. You have often seen vine. They descend into the earth to undergo vines as if a fire had run over them, scorching1 transformation, gluing sticks, stems, and old and withering every leaf. Then it is these little leaves together for an outside covering, lining creatures were working out their mission, and the interior very nicely with a silken texture, yet you will see men gather up all these leaves, The chrysalis is covered and cut, stamped each with its burden of eggs for the next season, and decorated with such a variegated pattern and heap them into piles for manure. Could that two pages would be exhausted in descrip- they more effectually comfort and aid their ene- tion, and then I should not convey to you the my? And they wonder where it is possible for beauty of its elaborateness. It is indeed a won- this nuisance to come from, when they appear derful piece of Infinite workmanshipmarvelous the next season to repeat their depredations. to examine, and impossible to describe. Tort rix pkilampellaVine-LeafRolleris The Aphis vitis Vine Aphisis a very a very pretty, delicate little moth. It belongs, delicate little insect, resembling the plant from its habits, to the Linunan order Tortrices louse found on the rose, geraniums, etc. Its Curlers or Twisters; but from the odd- anatomy is the same as the aphis of the corn. ity of the antenna of th~ male, which is thick- It punctures the veins of the leaves with its cued in the middle, it should constitute a sub- tube, can sing them to turn brown and wither, genus. They are, I am sorry to say, increasing and showering the honey-dew around as food rapidly enough to form one. This insect swarms for their young and their particular friends, the some seasons, over the Isabella and Catawba ants, These have no downy covering, but are grapes in particular. The moth is dusky, or translucent, varying in color from a delicate rather a mixture of black, gray, and brown green to a ruby red, according to the grape feathers intermixed, the black predominating. they are on. Toward the autumn, when the The fore-wings have white dots, with half cir- females are exhausted, the males are brought des of white under them; the hind-wings have forth, feed their time, and when ready to cast each a semicircular white dot. She deposits the last skin and attain their wings, they clasp her eggs in clusters near the large veins of the with the hooks on their fore-legs the back of leaf. In a few days, if congenial, they hatch; the stem, the skin bursts open, and the perfect feed together until they have changed their first insect emergesthe daintiest, prettiest little skin and grown stronger; then each rolls up a ehing imaginable. The old females now cast leaf; tying it nicely together with silk, coming their last skin, become rejuvenated, having dis- forth from under dover to nibble at every thing covered the fountain of youth in their wings. around them. The principal food, however, is They join in a dense damour, deposit their eggs the flue portions of the leaf between the vein or for the coming season, and then they both dis- fibre. When full-grown they are of a delicate appear from their green summer home. But green, with black dots scattered here and there this bower of bliss has its deep shadow in a over the segments. They are very lively and small, pretty ichneumon fly belonging solely to brisk; and should you find one straggling away this sub-genus, which deposits its eggs in the from his home, touch him, and you will see him body of the aphis to be fed and nourished by it. spin out a line of silk and drop down like a They are very numerous, and perform great cx- flash on it to the ground, until the danger has ecution among these atoms. Half a dozen lady- passed, when up he will go like a sailor on his birds (Ooccinella) domesticated on your vines rope, and wander on until he discovers his own will soon remove, by devouring, this little pest. domicile again. When they have eaten suffi- Procris Americana is the representative of the ciently, they spin firm knots of silk to the side European vitis Vine-Eaterin this country. of the leaf, into which they pass the hooks which It is of a blue-black color all over, except the they have at the end of the chrysalis. The leaf collar around the neck, which is of a bright or- may be the sport of every blast of wind, blowing ange; the tail is forked apparently by the tufts here and there. over the earth; but the little of feathers being sloped in this manner as they creature is snugly and securely moored until fall. Sometimes you may meet a specimen not spring time comes ag~dn. quite so sombre, and these are found north and These are easily kept in sul3~etion by gather- east, having a few yellowish scales on the body. ing from the vines all the leaves you see nicely She deposits her eggs in clusters under the leaf. rolled up and burning them. You will hereby In a few days, if warm, they hatch. destroy a host of pretty creatures; but your own The caterpillars are gregarious, feeding to- conscience mhst settle the result between the gether, until ready to go into cocoon, when they loss of life and the luxury of the grape. separate. They are of a faded yellow color at Tettigonia venustus. This insect is the first, turn green as they change their skins, and Handsome Vine-Hopper par excellencea attain after the last moulting black bands around most exquisit~iy pretty creature. They belong each segment. They are now rather hairy. to the harlequin family of the insect kingdom, INSECTS INJURIOUS TO THE VINE. 65 and are so numerous that one is puzzled where to find names sufficient to designate them. They are the merriest, most active, leaping, flying, joyous creatures in existenceAnacre- ons, in a poetical light, and most luxuriantly epicurean in the juice of the grape. I have chosen this from among the many, because I liave found it solely on the vinehaving seen them so thick on the under part of a leaf that you could scarcely wedge a pins point between them. But touch the leaf and trace the host with the eye if you can. They are greater leap- ers than the flea or grasshopper. When they have attained their wings the leap is trebled. Examine the leg: under the glass it is as if com- posed of glass and golden spines; the books are like cut rubies. But with all its beauty use and strength are combined. The mother insect de- posits her eggs along the veins of the entire leaf. When hatched they are scarcely to be seen by the eye unaided. They thrust in their beaks immediately, and continue to imbibe without moving from the spot for nearly a week. The skin then bursts, and after a space they try their legs with a leap to a new leaf. So it con- tinues until they reach the last change before they obtain their wings. They have now a piquant and most dandified look, with the tip of the abdomen contemptuously turned up. If the weather is unfavorable they will remain two or three weeks in this stage. Small and frail as they look, they are very hardy, many remaiOing over all winter. They are in habit, structure, and transformation Cicadae in miniature. The Greeks called these last Tettix, and these little people Tettigonia. The head is semicircu- lar, large, and flat; the eyes are very distant, placed at the side of the head; are flat and ex- pansive, not globular like those of the Cicadni. The sucker is strong and horny, and on each side shielded by a bristle. It has a most lugu- brious aspect to our eye; but be assured that if any creature on this ever-changeful busy earth knows happiness, joy, and content, it is this tumbling, leaping atom. It is positively to be envied; and as you watch theni in their gam- bols, you might, with no great stretch of imag- ination, think you beard them shout with exu- berance of life. You have often, doubtless, noticed vines grow- ing yellow, sickly, and dying prematurely, as if autumn had arrived in mid-summer. Examine the vines closely, and you will see that the leaves have a bright, shimmering light in the sun. Look closer, and you will find that these light specks are the cast-off garments of these merry- andrews. The depredation they commit is eas- ily distinguished from that of others from the utter withering of the leaves. Here, again, is the fallacy exhibited of using leaves for manure until they have been decomposed by some chem- ical process; for thousands of eggs remain over, as well as the perfect insect, to renew the family the next season. Attalabus aaalis Red-Tailed Attalabus. This little beetle is the Attalabus analis of Weber. I have retained its designation, al- though it has been classed by other American authors under other names, which must, of course, become synonyms. It has taken a new thought into its beetle head: to desert the oak, its own tree, for the vine in a great measure. They are constantly found of late years in this location. The oak-tree disappearing so rapidly from ~niong us, it has been thrown upon other resources. Under the breast, head, antennie, and legs, are blue-black; the thorax, abdomen, and wing- covers are of a very ugly dull red; the wing- covers are deeply punctured in straight rows. They have strong, firm snouts, which they thrust into buds and young fruit, and would, if not disturbed, soon ruin a vineyard. The mother insect contrives, with her legs and snout, to twist and bend the thick veins of a leaf so that it can be folded together to form a compact nest, where she deposits her eggs, where they are hatched, and where the young live un- til they change their skins and have arrived at maturity. They are thick white grubs, with their segments very much hunched; no legs, only fleshy membranes on the under part of the body. This grub is very destructive in forcing its way between the young grapes and gnawing a ring around their stems, which causes the small, green, dried-np specimens we see mixed in bunches with the full-grown, rich clusters. But it is not to be blamed for all such kind of mischief. It has a number of assistants in this way of destroying the vintage in the other orders of insects. This beetle generally selects her leaf for the nest high up, well-sheltered by others. The young are scarcely ever seen during the day, but are very active at night. The mature beetles can be found sunning themselves at noon upon the arbor or trellis-work. It is rarely that they are seen at other times. It is found likewise on the rose at some seasons, doing much injury. To secure the vine from much depredation no other plants should be placed near it; for it is wonderful to see with what alacrity other in- sects, when sufficiently near, hasten to luxuriate upon the vine. Its coolness, always moist state, shade, and tempting fluid can not be withstood by them. They evidently share~ with man his love and admiration of this solace. I have space for only one more of thesethe most common and usually met with every where throughout the country. But you must remem- ber that the vine has as attendants belonging especially to it some of the most brilliant and beautiful insects in the Lepidopteraorder. But the pen can give but mere shades. The superb colors and commingling of hues can be only represented by the brush. Pteropkorus margarita-dactylas Pearly Plume of the grape vine. This moth, which I have seen rapidly on the increase for the last seven years all over the country, differs so very essentially from Fitchs Pterophorsss perisceli- dactillusthe Gartered Grape-Vine Plume that it must receive another name. He has 66 HARPERS NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE. given us varieties enough to compare with; yet subject too prolific for their pens, be assured I it is similar to none of his. The name dactylus -have not the presumption to think I can render was given to them by Liiln2eus, who proposed to agreeable, or take away the tedium of its de- designate the few he knew by the number of scription. The spines, irregular markings, sin- these fingers. Being designated by some pre- gular projections, transverse lines, concave spots, vious cognomen, Latreille and others have called convex dots, angular edges, circular dots, ele- them Fissipennes, or Split-winged moths. vated points, depressed~teeth, and jagged lines, It belongs to the last family of the Lepidopterous would exhaust the ever-patient SWammerdam, if insects the Aluceta?, the sub-genus Pterophorus, he could return to this mund4ne sphere. I am the first having six feathers in the wings, con- rarely baffled in any thing I undertake; but nected at the point, while the last has two in the after four pages of closely-written manuscript, fore-wings and three in the under. I discovered that I had not exhausted the front Harris thought them merely deserving of view. I rose in despair from the magnifier; for mention, but not in an injurious point of view, understand that on either side you turn it you there were so few varieties, and their presence have a more multitudinous exhibition of angles, so harmless. Now they have increased to such and every side seems to differ in the manner the a degree that two or three dozen varieties can points project. But here I must make a reser- be taken an evening around lights during the vationthis chrysalis was of a pale-brown, lus- summer months in every part of the country. trous color, and many of these extraordinary They are very minute, and if not examined markings may have been the reflection of light with a glass you would easily suppose they were through the delicate translucent membrane of mosquitoes or long-legged gnats. the chrysalis, as it was very fresh and not yet This moth is very beautiful under the glass, hardened by the air, although older ones show the feathers are long and graceful like threads no less carving in the patterns. Markings and of a pearly texture, with a band of soft, delicate dots might have been only rays of light refract- brown tinging them a little above the tips. The ing from many prominent angles: suffice it, I eyes are black, the abdomen slightly clouded, believe this chrysalis is beyond the descriptive the legs brown, with tufts of long hairs upon powers of any man, and must be seen to be con- them. When in repose they hang most fantas- ceived and understood in all its wonderful and tically by their front legs, crossing their hind elaborate parts and tracery. ones under them to support the weight of the How meagre all this looks as I write ithow abdomen, which must be no slight burden for impossible I feel it is to convey to the minds of such frail, delicate wings to bear up. others all that interests me in these wonderful The mother moth deposits her eggs near the exhibitions; but yet it is true what is written by joints of the vine. They hatch only in very the critic, In whatsoever thing thou hast thy- warm weather. They cast their skins four self felt interest, in that or in nothing hope to times; they have sixteen feet; are of a bright inspire others with interest. I desire to excite green, with four black dots on each segment your curiosity, kindle your admiration, and in- from Which long white hairs protrude. It is a crease the study of these most extraordinary, slow, quiet little creature, does not like to he ever-varying works of Nature, touching you at disturbed. It draws several leaves together and every turn, upon which your eyes fall a dozen spins a spacious chamber of silk between them, times a day, which intrude themselves under being very careful to match the edges, and fill your touch, which repose, soliciting examination up the interstices with very closely - woven at your feet, in your wood-land walks, in your patches. You can easily see this extraordinary graperics, orchards, at board, in parlor, garden, performance by chipping a piece out of any of and fieldin a word, every where. Life is a the leaves. You will find it next day nicely mystery which Immortality alone can solve; and closed by a silken window of compact texture. when presented to us under such marvelous, in- A vineyard- where they are found will soon comprehensible phases, the mind ofttimes re- look as if it had been scorched by fire. When fuses the conception as bewilderingleaving us they have eaten their allotted timewhich gen- only erally lasts as long as there is any thing to eat Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears. they travel to the small branches or tendrils, cast their skias, and gradually close up into chrysalidessuspended from the vine like little KATY KEITH. ends of dead, withered stems or scraps of bark. I. You would never conceive that there was so m HE wished-for night at last arrived, and I much mischief inclosed in such a small space, I stood before the little mirror in my own -and you will be amazed at the number you can room, dressing for Mrs. Daltons party. With- count. Sometimes ten or twelve of these chrys- in its limited encadreozent I saw a French-pale alides are found hanging in the space of four complexion, eyes and hair blacker than hhick, inches on a branch, and features just enough off of Greek to allow I could not nownor indeed at any time a little animation. Your regular Greek faces are undertake to describe this cradle of the Plume only fit for marble. Put them into flesh and Moth. I suppose they are much alike. If blooa, and their repose degenerates to insipid- other minute, indefatigable authors find the ity. People called this countenance before me

66 HARPERS NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE. given us varieties enough to compare with; yet subject too prolific for their pens, be assured I it is similar to none of his. The name dactylus -have not the presumption to think I can render was given to them by Liiln2eus, who proposed to agreeable, or take away the tedium of its de- designate the few he knew by the number of scription. The spines, irregular markings, sin- these fingers. Being designated by some pre- gular projections, transverse lines, concave spots, vious cognomen, Latreille and others have called convex dots, angular edges, circular dots, ele- them Fissipennes, or Split-winged moths. vated points, depressed~teeth, and jagged lines, It belongs to the last family of the Lepidopterous would exhaust the ever-patient SWammerdam, if insects the Aluceta?, the sub-genus Pterophorus, he could return to this mund4ne sphere. I am the first having six feathers in the wings, con- rarely baffled in any thing I undertake; but nected at the point, while the last has two in the after four pages of closely-written manuscript, fore-wings and three in the under. I discovered that I had not exhausted the front Harris thought them merely deserving of view. I rose in despair from the magnifier; for mention, but not in an injurious point of view, understand that on either side you turn it you there were so few varieties, and their presence have a more multitudinous exhibition of angles, so harmless. Now they have increased to such and every side seems to differ in the manner the a degree that two or three dozen varieties can points project. But here I must make a reser- be taken an evening around lights during the vationthis chrysalis was of a pale-brown, lus- summer months in every part of the country. trous color, and many of these extraordinary They are very minute, and if not examined markings may have been the reflection of light with a glass you would easily suppose they were through the delicate translucent membrane of mosquitoes or long-legged gnats. the chrysalis, as it was very fresh and not yet This moth is very beautiful under the glass, hardened by the air, although older ones show the feathers are long and graceful like threads no less carving in the patterns. Markings and of a pearly texture, with a band of soft, delicate dots might have been only rays of light refract- brown tinging them a little above the tips. The ing from many prominent angles: suffice it, I eyes are black, the abdomen slightly clouded, believe this chrysalis is beyond the descriptive the legs brown, with tufts of long hairs upon powers of any man, and must be seen to be con- them. When in repose they hang most fantas- ceived and understood in all its wonderful and tically by their front legs, crossing their hind elaborate parts and tracery. ones under them to support the weight of the How meagre all this looks as I write ithow abdomen, which must be no slight burden for impossible I feel it is to convey to the minds of such frail, delicate wings to bear up. others all that interests me in these wonderful The mother moth deposits her eggs near the exhibitions; but yet it is true what is written by joints of the vine. They hatch only in very the critic, In whatsoever thing thou hast thy- warm weather. They cast their skins four self felt interest, in that or in nothing hope to times; they have sixteen feet; are of a bright inspire others with interest. I desire to excite green, with four black dots on each segment your curiosity, kindle your admiration, and in- from Which long white hairs protrude. It is a crease the study of these most extraordinary, slow, quiet little creature, does not like to he ever-varying works of Nature, touching you at disturbed. It draws several leaves together and every turn, upon which your eyes fall a dozen spins a spacious chamber of silk between them, times a day, which intrude themselves under being very careful to match the edges, and fill your touch, which repose, soliciting examination up the interstices with very closely - woven at your feet, in your wood-land walks, in your patches. You can easily see this extraordinary graperics, orchards, at board, in parlor, garden, performance by chipping a piece out of any of and fieldin a word, every where. Life is a the leaves. You will find it next day nicely mystery which Immortality alone can solve; and closed by a silken window of compact texture. when presented to us under such marvelous, in- A vineyard- where they are found will soon comprehensible phases, the mind ofttimes re- look as if it had been scorched by fire. When fuses the conception as bewilderingleaving us they have eaten their allotted timewhich gen- only erally lasts as long as there is any thing to eat Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears. they travel to the small branches or tendrils, cast their skias, and gradually close up into chrysalidessuspended from the vine like little KATY KEITH. ends of dead, withered stems or scraps of bark. I. You would never conceive that there was so m HE wished-for night at last arrived, and I much mischief inclosed in such a small space, I stood before the little mirror in my own -and you will be amazed at the number you can room, dressing for Mrs. Daltons party. With- count. Sometimes ten or twelve of these chrys- in its limited encadreozent I saw a French-pale alides are found hanging in the space of four complexion, eyes and hair blacker than hhick, inches on a branch, and features just enough off of Greek to allow I could not nownor indeed at any time a little animation. Your regular Greek faces are undertake to describe this cradle of the Plume only fit for marble. Put them into flesh and Moth. I suppose they are much alike. If blooa, and their repose degenerates to insipid- other minute, indefatigable authors find the ity. People called this countenance before me KATY KEITH. 67 handsome, but its jet and ivory contrasts failed to please me. I wasnt my own style at all; Josie was that. Most blushingly and beautiful- ly blonde; slender nose, a thought retrousst~e; locks of gold, and eyes of azure. Little and light, too, as a fairy. My own tall shape, so firm and full, seemed almost heavy in compar ison. On the bed lay my dressthat poor old Swiss which I bad worn ever since leaving off short frocks. It had been pieced down and tucked for this occasion; my own hands had clear- starched it to the last degree of sheer-ness; and mamma, by much contrivance, had man- aged to procure fresh sash and gloves. A box on the bureau held my ornamentsbrooch, shoulder-knots, and head-dress. They were of my own manufacture, scarlet verbena with ge- ranium leaves for green. Mamma came np to aid the finishing touches. You will look nicely after all, dear, she said, with a cheerful smile. I wish so, mother, that you could have gone. But you know it was not possible. I shall have a good quiet evening at home, and you must enjoy yourself for both. There is a car- riage; it must be Mrs. Harvey and Josephine. Run down, Katy; dont keep them waiting. There is hardly room here for any thing but Josie and her flounces, said Mrs. Harvey, as she divided the back-scat with me. Drive fast, John. We rolled along, my own heart beating high as Cinderellas going to the ball. The dressing-room was half full when we en- tered, hut every one stopped, I thought, to see me lay aside my wrappings. Thatwas the try- ing moment. All the girls were shining out in fresh, pretty things, and it was awful to have to run the gauntlet of so many eyes. Maria Gib- son paused, shoe in hand, to notice me. She was a sort of person that you felt afraid of, without respecting in the least; rich herself, and supercilious to those ~vho were not. Now, said she, the great secret will be out. Look, girls, with all your might. She has been so careful that none of us could even get a glimpse. I unshawled with outward calm and inward discomposure. Oh ! said Maria, after a moments pause, its that, is it? Few words, but the tone made them express- ive. I was so vexed I could have shaken her! Forgive, dear r~ader, this most unheroine-like emotion; but I was never perfect. Dont mind her, Katy, whispered Jo- sephine, consolingly, and offered to pin on my bouquets. That done, I was bidden to survey the effect. The scarlet blossoms lit up my sim- ple garb; my shoulders rose white and smooth from the clear muslin; a dark lustre shone in my eyes. And glancing at Maria, I saw that she had forgotten to wipe the pearl-powder from her lashes, and her gloves wrinkled frightfully across the back, while her collar-bones stood out to that degree that you might have laid a knife ou them and it would have staid as on a shelf. So I comforted myself with the re- flection that there were some things worse than an old dress and no jewelry. Below stairs it was a scene of enchantment to Josie and myself, both new to party-going; all light, and bloom, and splendor. Dosrs and windows were open, the calm stillness of a sum- mer night coming up to the glitter and hum within. Do you recall the peculiar feeling that contrast gives you? I can not describe it. People were standing about on the piazza in half-seen groups, while indoors it grew every moment brighter and gayer as fresh faces and fresh dresses made their entrance. Josie and I subsided, after some little wandering, into a quiet corner; two or three young men joined us, and conversation became animated. In the midst of it there was a slight sensation, a mo- ments hush through the room. I looked up. Two gentlemen came in. One of them was good-looking, well-dressed; nothing very spe- cial about him. But the other! The instant my eye encountered that dark, speaking gaze, I felt that the hero had arrived and the romance was begun. An obliging attendant went at once to forage for information. He returned with full partie. ulars; the new arrivals were Mr. Krumbhaar and Mr. Ledlie. Strangers no longer; we had all heard of them a hundred times. The for- mer was a far-away cousin of Mrs. Dalton, well- connected, rich, and, to crown all, unmarried. Mr. Ledlies reputation was extensive. A youn,,, lawyer, he was more noted for literary taste than legal knowledge, though that may have been good enough for aught I know. He wrote po- etry and sketches in the magazines, and was very much the fashion wherever he appeared. How clever of Mrs. Dalton to have secured these attractions, and to have kept so quiet about it too! I expected only to admire the lions at a distance, but no great time elapsesl before Mr. Ledlie was introduced. Oh what a flutter of confusion and delight! He actually at my side talking to me! I wonder if any one nowadays has that holy reverence of authors that I used to feel? To have had Lines in the corner of our village paper invested a person with awful distinction; but to write pieces regularly in the magazinesabove all, to have published a book that was the height of the sublime! What had I to say to such a one? Indistinct ideas of Margaret Fuller and Madame de Sta~i.l flitted across my mind, but furnished no inspira- tion. How I wished now that I had read that dull review in the last Living Age, instead of devouring the stories! It appeared, however, that Mr. Ledlie did not intend to plunge at once into literary discussion, but was willing to talk a while about the even- ing, the party, and such topics, like any coin- mon mortal. Here I was sufficiently at home to make intelligible replies. And soon a some- HARPERS NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE. thing in his mannerdeference, admiration, I cerning the leading writers of the day, and he hardly know whatreminded me that I was a listened attentively, answering with sixch dis- young girl, and he only a young man, after all. crimination! From which I now infer that he I grew self-possessed, remembering that last look must have agreed with me, since we are apt to at the swing-glass up stairs. How conceited I think that the best proof of discrimination that you say. Perhapsbut a little harmless con- any one can give. In the very height of discus- ceit is so comfortable! sion Mr. Krumbhaar was presented. I can not tell how long we had talked togeth- There never was a more unwelcome interrup- er when Miss Dalton sat down to the piano. It tion, but I saw at once that it was for the best. might have been five minutes or five hours. I We had been talking together quite as long as was only conscious of a perfect pleasure in which was desirable in a mixed company. No doubt he light, and flowers, and color, and the dark eyes thought so too, for he presently left me, and went beaming on me, were so blended that it was im- off to make himself agreeable to some of the oth- possible to separate them. er girls. What a contrast Mr. Krumbhaar was! Of course, at the first touch of the keys every Not ill-looking, not unpleasing; but so different one ceased talking, and addressed themselves to from that expressive face, that instructive con- listening. Miss Dalton was our village Thal- versation! berg. I saw little of my hero after this till dancing Shall we not hear you in the course of the began, save when, just before supper, a few of evening ? asked Mr. Ledlie, when the music us were standing on the back piazza. and the compliments ~vere over. What is this vine? asked Josephine of I hardly think you will, was my reply. Miss Dalton, a handsome young woman, some That is cruel. I am sure you sing delight- years older than ourselves. It looks like Mat- fully! rimony, but I can not be certain in this light. Such faith is pleasant to witness, but Im Yes, it is Matrimony, said Miss Dalton, nfraid it has not the power to work miracles, laughing. We planted it years ago, and tend. My friends have always been obliged to take my ed it with the greatest care. Season after season musical abilities upon trust.. Like Lady Cath- l~IIaggie and I come out and sit in its shadow, erine de Bourgh, I should have been a great but the charm doesnt seem to work. proficient if I had ever learned. Poor Maggie! said Mr. Krumbhaar, is AhI I see you read Miss Austen. How her case so hopeless too ? do you like her ? Even more so, for she is the elder. Now for it! I thought, with ner~ous fore- Mr. Ledlie looked at me. Materials for boding. If he only keeps to novels I shall your friend Miss Austen, he said, mischievous- manage well enough; but if he goes into gener- ly. I colored, wondering if I should ever forget ahzing and talking in that large way, like the that unfortunate remark, or remember it with- reviews, I can never do it. Then, aloud: out vexation. Very much. She is exceedingly clever and After supper the evening began in earnest. amusing, whatever we may think of her good- The music, that had been tantalizing us from nature. the closed room across the hall, burst forth in full What leads you to distrust her there ? harmony; young hoarts and young feet wel- She dwells so much on petty foiblestraits comed it with rapture. They are fortunate that are ludicrous, and at the, same time des- whose mortifications end with the dressing- picable. Dont you think so? And, besides, I room. Josie and I did not sit down a single hate that way she has of making out tbat women set. Mr. Ledlie danced twice with each of us; are always bent on marriageall the mothers but my most frequent partner was Mr. Krumb- plotting for it; all the heroines, even the good haar. I began to see after a while that he was ones, thinking of it. I dont believe its so at distinguishing nie, but the discovery afforded all no great satisfaction. how could any one else I stopped suddenly, my cheeks on fire. What be of the slightest consequence when the owner sort of speech was this to make to a young man? of those eyes was in the room? Clearly all other Oh dear! And the remembrance of some spec- men were only accidents that saved us from the alations of my own added depth to the blush. ignominious doom of wall-flowers. Mr. Ledlie was too polite to take any notice, hut The evening would come to an end, and we I knew what he must be feeling. Nice little went home tired and happy. rustic he considers me! I thought, storming with inward vexation. You dont like satire, then ? I never could see why people pine to visit Oh yes; at least I like Mr. Thackeray so foreign climes when there is such a superfluity iiiuch! That was in the days of Vaaity Fair, of beauty in the commonest landscape they can vhea the great man seemed like another Jove, find at home; more than our souls are half-edu- almost, beholding from supernal heights our lit- cated to appreciate or enjoy. The country about tie follies, and showing them up with a wisdom Weyburn always satisfied me. It was nothing that had more of tears in it than laughter. So remarkable; it would just about average with we went on, and had a literary discourse. I scenery throughout the State. Blue hills in the confided to him my own important views con- distance, forests skirting the meadows, plenty KATY KEITH. 69 of foliage and clear-running streams. My com- placency in it seemed fully shared by Mrs. Dal- tons guests; one week, a second passed, and still they lingered. Josie and I saw them continually. There was a vast deal of business to be transacted in the arranging numerous schemes of pleasure, and these necessitated frequent ealls; thrown so much together we could not long consider them as strangers. I remember how uncomfortable I was the first night of expecting such a call. I had read a great deal about taste imparting such elegance to the plainest belongings, but I didnt know how to do it. Any thing in the way of costly adornment was impossible to us, and from my heart I abhorred all cheap domes- tie forms of ornamentation. If I picked a bou- quet there was nothing to put it in but a tum- bler or a pitcher. After puzzling myself full fif- teen minutes on the subject, I was fain to leave the six cane chairs and the brass-nailed sofa to themselves. There was a IPre-Raphaclitism about the whole composition, I thought, that ought to strike a lover of art. Happily, I wasnt at all ashamed of mamma, ever neat and ladylike, nor of my father, who could talk as well as Mr. Ledlie himself. Few things could be pleasanter than our life that summera gay succession of drives and picnics, rides and fishing parties Mr. Krumb- haar exerted himself in the most amiable man- ner to confer enjoyment upon every one, and his friendly dispositions being seconded by an over- flowing purse he succeeded to admiration. Our native beaux were very nice young men, but nearly all of them had some occupation which took up the greater share of their time. Mr. Krumbhaar, on the contrary, was able to give the whole of his mind to devising pleasures. He it was who canvassed the neighborhood to secure the needed extra carriage, or coaxed the busy farmers to spare their horses for a day. He, too, discovered that our mill-pond was per- fectly adapted to figure as a lake, and had the prettiest boat sent up to us from New York. Many were the exclamations of delight over the graceful toy that morning when we first went down to view it. But what do you call her, Mr. Krumb- haar? we asked. Whereupon he invited our suggestions. One original mind proposed the Lady of the Lake, a second the Water Lily, a third Undine, and so on, all of which appella- tions were so charming and appropriate that he professed himself unable to choose among them. To avoid partiality, he ~vas obliged to be him- self the sponsor, and the boat was christened the Belle of Weyburn. And this with such an air of gallantry and meaning that every girl of our group felt certain of being the particular belle whom he designed to compliment. That was a golden summer! Newport and Saratoga have given me nothing like it; Baden was lead in comparison. How busy I was! Up with the dawn that mamma might not suffer from my absences; flying around with smooth- ing-irons, stirring up cake, or moulding batches of bread. Every thing out of the way by the time civilized people began to show themselves; and then for merry-making. The number of times that poor old Swiss went through my hands defies all ~omputation. For if I had no new dresses I was determined that my few old ones should at least be fresh. Any thing soiled or worn was my aversion, and I felt more like a lady in a tenpenny calico with neat ~loves and shoes than I could have done in brocade or In- dia mull without them. Just a shade of care mingled with all this fe- licity. What did Mr. Ledlie mean? Did he just like to talk with me as a pleasant lively girl? No, I didnt believe that. Vanity or consciousness gave assurance that I was more to him than the rest. But why, then, was his manner so unequal? Why Was it that I could not stir from the house without encountering him; that he would devote himself a whole even- ing utterly to me; yet another time vouchsafe me scarce the slightest notice, and divide his attentions among half a dozen others? Did he love me, and fear to give way to his feelings for a penniless girl? Or was he doubtful of my re- gard? Or was he only seeking to add another to his list of conquests? I could not tell, though I pondered the matter. many a time. I used to say to myself proudly that I did not wear my heart on my sleeve for every daw to peck at; but was this a daw? Was it not rather a phe- nix, sole of its kind in the world? And sup- posing my heart hung out in that exposed con- dition, did he care to try it? Would he con- sider it a fruit worth nibbling? It was my in. tention most assuredly not to fall in love with- out due provocation; but is it safe to trust to the prudence of seventeen in that respect? Five or six other considerations, too, perplex- ed me. Mr. Krumbhaars manner admitted but one meaning: honest, straightforward admira- tion was very visible to any one who would look. The girls used to laugh at me about it; perhaps some of them envied me; but no, I dont be- lieve it. Nice, friendly girls, brought up to- gether, are not so jealous and malicious as the story-writers would make out. And it was im- possible to help liking Mr. Krumbhaar; he was intelligent, well-read, with that sort of cultiva- tion which a man can scarcely live much in the world without acquiring. There was nothing to object to; and then his wealth! To me it looked fabulous; that fortune contained all the miraculous possibilities of a fairy L le. Mr. Ledlie was only an author, and I had said I would never marry a poor man, come what would, butnh, if I only knew just what he in- tended! One day there was a picnic to the Wormley Spring a favorite resort of ours, though it would be hard to say why. There was the Spring-house, standing in a pleasant groveno pleasanter, however, than twenty others in our own immediate neighborhood; and there was the water bubbling up beautifully clear, and 70 HARPERS NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE. tasting like a mixture of all the salts in the pharmacopceia. These were the sole and soli- tary attractions, beyond such walks as every belt of woodland and bit of pasture affords us. Nevertheless, Wormley was greatly patronized, and all the girls were glad to hear of the pro- jected visit. There was a large party of us, some in car- riages and some on horseback. I went in the saddle, of course. I never could see how any one that had the choice should do otherwise. In the allotment of cavaliers Mr. Ledlie fell to my share; it pleased me, and he did not seem dissatisfied. If there were any charm for him in my society he yielded to it this morning with- out resistance. As we rode along, the fresh air blowing in my face, youth, health, and hope in full possession, I envied no one living, nor wish- ed for any change~ How ~vell you ride! said my companion, presently. Yes, I think I do, was my candid admis- sion that is, considering the way in which I have picked up the accomplishmentriding our own old horse to water, or going a mile or two on some very safe and steady animal belonging to a friend. Your present steed is not of that descrip- tion. He is quite spirited enough to call for a little caution on your part. Thank you; but Im not at all timid. I see you are not. You have plenty of courage and self-possessionvaluable qualities, you will discover, in the management of life as well as of a horse. I dont believe life is so difficult to manage. It looks easy enongh to me. You are like the man who read Euclid in an afternoon, and wondered that people found any difficulties in it. I suppose you must have gone through and solved all the problems, you speak so feel- ingly. On the contrary, I am in the midst of a very perplexing one. Can not you aid me, Miss Keith? You seemed to regard my powers rather contemptuously just now. Yes, hut your confidence in yourself has in- spired me with respect. I am sure you have some infallible rule. It ought to be infallible, and it is very brief; so I will give it to you. Do what is right, and take all the comfort that you can. The first part is orthodox, certainly. And it is by this that you work all your problems ? I wish to do so. Sometimes I fail. The last clause is always easy, I presume. Not when I have neglected the first. You are a safe adviser, Miss Keith. But there are circumstances where the Right is not so clear as one could wish. I fear I have not sufficient experience, if the case is complicated. I sometimes think there ought to be no complication, he said, hurriedly. Oh, if by one bold effort we could conquer Fate! Or if we dared but follow out the impulse The rest of the party came clattering up. The sentence was left unfinished. What had he meant to say? and how was I concerned in his perplexity? These were questions that asked themselves over and oier again as we all rode on together. But of course he would answer them the first time that we were alone. Ill-grounded expectation! Was there ever any thing so tantalizing as that mans behavior? For the remainder of our ride he was politely cool; and during all our little rambles about the Spring no trace returned of his eager, ani- mated manner. However this might disappoint me, I did not intend to make myself miserable about it. If he could wait, so could I. I prac- ticed on my own recipe, and took all the com- fort that I could. After dinner, while we were all sitting on the grass in a languid, dolce far niente mood, Mr. Krumbhaar opened on a favorite theme of his. He was a great admirer of every thing German, and took pains to let his partialities be known. Mr. Ledlie, on the contrary, to whom German was as his mother-tongue, seldom made allusion to it; indeed, it might be said for him that he never invited attention to his acquirements, but was content to let them speak for themselves as occasion offered. Mr. Krumhhaar talked well, and we all listened with pleasure. Goethe was his idol, and as we country-girls knew very lit- tle of the demi-god, he was most happy to en- lighten our ignorance. Sitting there so quietly, I never thought to chance on any thing that touched myself; but very soon our narrator reached the episode of Frederica. You may guess with what eagerness, veiled by seeming indifference, and even a hypocritical little yawn, I listened. When he had finished opinions were freely offered. Goethe was pronounced to be awfully heartless and dreadfully cruel; and dont you think, Mr. Krumbhaar, that he deserved torture for behaving so? And Mr. Krumbhaar was most politely acquiescent. I strolled off by myself among the trees: a little time alone was what I wanted, but was not destined to achieve. Mr. Ledlie followed me. I spied a rare little blossom, and was bend- ing to gather it as he came up. What a very pretty flower! he said, and how singular! Can you tell me its name ? It is the calumet-fiowerthe Pipe of Peace. The Indians named it, I believe. Look; it needs no great imagination to trace the bowl and stem, and the pure white of both adds to the resemblance. Did you ever see a perfectly white plant before ? Neverbut Weyburn contains a great deal that is unique. This summer is altogether ex- ceptional with mean idyl beautiful as new. is it so very new to you to be idle ? I asked, with a silly little laugh. Dont despise me too much; I felt that he had come to see how I took that narrative, and wanted to be careless as I could. KATY KEITH. 71 Nay, I am sure you dont misunderstand me. I beg your pardon for such dullness. You mean something in the Tennysonian line; pas- toral simplicity, etc. Yes, I think we are all very Arcadian indeed. Now you are ridiculing me; but I do not intend to be shamed out of my rare sentimental- ism. This out-of-door life we lead, with its walks and drives and dances, is a bit of real poetry to one who has passed so many years among the brick-and-mortar. And there are other things He paused. I made a great effort and gained courage to look up. Our eyes met. What a power and sweetness were in his glance! My heart acknowledged it, went out to meet it. If I only had been sure he was in earnest with me heaven would that minute bave come down to earth. It is hard to dread a trick of selfish van- ity when you would giveyour life almostto believe a man sincere. Yes, there are other things, I nnswered; Mrs. Walkers party to-morrow night, for in- stance. Not pastoral~ to be sure, but good in its way. Shall you go? Probablywhat do you think of our good Krumbhaars powers of narrative ? They are very fair, as far as I can judge. He talks well, does he not? Passably; a little bookish and stiff, per- haps; but that is a matter of taste. I noticed that you gave no opinion of his historiette. That must have disappointed him. I had none to give, was my response; as calm as I could make it. And why not? The other young, ladies expressed themselves very decidedly. Unthinkingly, too, Im afraid. They did not stop to reflect that Genius is emancipated from all shackles of truth and honor. You are satirical, Miss Keith. Pray do not suspect a poor simple girl of satire, I said, smiling. Least of all with so august a subject. So you seriously think those are the only grounds on which he can be justified ? I dont believe Ive thought about the mat- ter. Of course I wished to leave the topic, stop talking of it, turn to any thing else. Why could he not do so? Why must he go over the whole, analyzing the motives that prompted Goethes action as calmly as he might a flower. And I to sit there, feeling every word he uttered as so intensely personal, meant so thoroughly to apply to our relations with each other! After it all came another appeal to my opinion. It is a very plain case, I answered, laugh- ingly. The choice lay between sacrificing her or himself and in such circumstances what brill- iant, fascinating young man could hesitate ? You always come back to that view of it, he said. You will not see the demands of a genius like Goethes. Your devotion to the Frederica interest blinds you. There we differ. My opinion is founded simply on impartial justice. No one devoted to her interests could possibly wish her to become the wife of a man selfish or indifferent enough to hesitate about the matter. That is such a school-girl way of thinking! he said, in an impatient tone. I felt insulted, regarding my views at that time as much more judicious and import~tnt than I do at present. However, I was not quite silly enough to defend the theory to him, of all men. Well, I asked, coolly, why should not I have such ways of thinking? It is not six months since I left school, you know. I believe I have known it at some time; b~~t it is impossible to remember it when with you, or to demand from you less than a womans powers of judgment and feeling. Had we not better join the others ? I asked. As you pleasebut give me that flower be- fore we go. I held the blossom toward him; he took my hand just one instant in his own, and said: You will let it be a sign of peace between us? Why? I asked with artless wonder. What strife has there been? Have I been quarreling without knowing it ? He was rather confused, and I enjoyed the sight. I mean my arch-treason just now against the sovereignty of love. Youll forgive me, will you not ? Dont mention it, I cried. You could not think me so silly as to take offense at your hav- ing an opinion and expressing it. In my own room that night I rehearsed this interview perhaps twenty times, and at each rep- etition thought of something vastly apposite that I might have said. If we could only write our conversations down beforehand how much better they would be! But the opportunity had not been vouchsafed me; I could only hope now that my manner had not betrayed too much and enlightened my enemy too thoroughly. It is very fortunate, I reflected, that I didnt foil in love, hut only walked in prudently a very little way. As I am likely to get be- yond my depth, I xviii just turn around and walk out again. I did not doubt my ability to do so. As to Mr. Ledlie, his sentiments were plain enoughas plain as when a man paints Beware of the Dog! upon a board and sets it up on his premises. If after that you go upon the ground without due safeguards it is your own look-out. I meant to heed the warning. And, after all, had I been very foolish? An attractive man came in my way, and I had been attracted; there was nothing in that to be ashamed of. I had behaved in good faith throughout; had he cared for me I was ready to be cared for, and to be grateful, too. But as he didnt, why, there it must end. I should do well to keep out of his way as much as possible, and avoid all danger of finding him too pleasing. Unless, indeed, I used any opportunity that befell to make the parting quite as hard for him as for myself. The 72 HARPERS NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE. idea was wonderfully tempting. I couldnt think You are sure it is safe? asked mamma, it quite right. Flirting in any shape did not rather anxiously. consist with my notions of propriety. Yet with Certainly, my dear madam. Do you think what kind explicitness he had stated his views I would take Miss Keith into danger ? that afternoon! Did I not fairly owe him some- It would he an awkward spot if any thing thing for it? And was a heart under such ad- happened, remarked papa. The pond is very mirable control likely to suffer much from all deep, and there are dangerous holes about. that I could do? But what can happen ? asked Mr. Krumb I. Mamma and I went out the next day for a regular calling expedition. On our way home we stopl)ed at the cabinet-makers for some trifle a missing rung for a chair or a varnish-brush perhaps; I am very sure it was not to order any thing new. The first thing we came upon, close to the door, was a man at work on a coffin; in- deed there was scarcely any thing but coffins in the room. Of all materials and sizes, they stood every where about: it made me dismal. I watched the man at his ~vork. What a dreary, wretched impression of poverty and gloom that last refuge of mortality made upon me! It was of some common stuff hideously stained in stripes of black and reda wild attempt at imi- tating rosewood, maybe, while untold wealth of German silver had been lavished on it in the way of medallion ornaments. These last the man was polishing. The cheap pretense, the miserable sham, were horrible, when you re- membered what it was. Oh, mamma! I exclaimed, as soon as we were in the street, did you see that shocking coffin ? Not to notice it especially. What ailed it? Ugh ! I said, with a shiver. When my time comes, mother, nail me up in a pine box rather than such a thing as that. I never could lie still in it. Katy ! said mamma, reprovingly, you should not speak lightly of such solemn mat- ters. I dont mean it so, maam, I assure you. Its just the way I feel. The impression staid by me for an hour or two: wretched make-shift! wretched poverty that called for it! Mr. Krumbhaar spent a part of the evening with us. The thought of fortune, luxuries, as- sured position, connected with the very sound of his name, came into my mood like sunlight into a cavern. Some days passed by, and we were all togeth- er frequently, as usual. I had ample room to practice my change of plan on Mr. Ledlie. It was amusing to see how he advanced as I re- tiredbecame more eager as I was less acqui- escent. I was in doubt how far to go with him not satisfied as to how much punishment he de- served, nor how far it was safe for me to ven- ture in inflicting it. I caught myself wonder- ing more than once whetherhe were not becom- ing a little less prudent; whether it might not be possible that he would forget the claims of genius and sacrifice himself if I desired it. One evening there was to be a water-party. Mr. Krumbhaar came for me. haar. True enough; you are none of you children to get frightened and upset the boat, and your craft is water-tight, I suppose. Let her go, Mary; no possible harm can come of it. You will row, will you not ? said mamma, following us to the door. I so dread these sudden flaws in a sail-boat. The desired assurance was given, and we went down to tbe pond. Our shallop lay near the mill, and as we sat waiting for the others I watched the water tumbling and foaming among the great wheels and massive timbers. The wicket is broken, observed my com- panion. If it is not mended soon the ma- chinery may suffer. These bits of straw and shingle can do no harm, but a stout log might make mischief. Just then the others came up. What are you studying so intently ? asked Mr. Led- lie, proceeding to devote himself to me at once. Only this current; see how relentless it is: I can not take my eyes from it. Look at these poor fragments that have fallen within its pow- er: escape is hopeless; down must they go and be ground to atoms. Can not you say some- thing on the occasion ? In what vein? That this flume is Destiny, for instance, and we the floating bits. You have said it for me; besides, it is not my creed. You were brought up on fore-ordina- tion, I presume; I, on the contrary, believe de- voutly in free-will. How can you? I dont see how any one can free himself from Fate, call it by what name you likecircumstance, election, any thing. I perceive that you wish to escape responsi- bility. Oh no; I feel myself responsible, all the same. I cant quite tell you how I dare say you would have difficulty in ex- plaining; but take courage. You are a very consistent little Calvinist. Indeed I am not! I hate Calvin. That was heartily spoken. But a gradu- ate of the Sunday-school hating Calvin! What a sad result of Barness Notes! for I cant lay it to the Assembly Catechism. Im afraid youve never studied Mr. Barnes, I said. He is quite as Calvinistic as I want to find him. The boat shoved ofl and our doctrinal disciAs.. sion came to an end.. It was a delicious night, bland and still. The new moon hung in the west; a second heaven shone on us from the still water. In the softening light our useful pond became a pretty lake, and we all pro- KATY KEITH. 73 nounced it worthy of a formal christening. Sev- eral neat titles were suggested. These would be charming, I said, if there were no to-morrow. But when daylight comes, and we see the great mill distinctly with all its unpoetic adjuncts, then we shall blush for our evening romance. Let it be Lake Osna- burg; isnt that better than Domestic or heavy nableached? If we could just tear down the mill ! said Josephine. When the banks were cleared we should have a lovely lake. Your father would hardly thank you for the wish, Josie. A good share of Mr. Harveys large income was drawn from this establish- ment. I suppose not, she answered. Isnt it very tiresome, Mr. Ledlie, that things are al- way~ interfering so? How ? One can make such nice plans, and then along comes a person, like Katy here, with a practical turn of mind and knocks them all to pieces. I dont mean about the mill alone, but it is always so. Romance and Utility are al- ways getting in each others way. And then Utility has the road. Its a very sensible arrangement, youll find, Miss Josephine. Romance is but unsubstantial diet. You professionals are not fair judges, I remarked. Every thing romantic has become so stale to you in the course of trade that you assume it must be so for the rest of the ~vorld. Mr. Ledlie was not quite pleased; indeed where did you ever find a man who liked the accusation of being thoroughly unpoetic? He made a half-defense while Mr. Krumbhaar whis- pered in my ear some pretty nonsense about making my life more beautiful than any dream of fancy. I did not listen with disapprobation. It is so pleasant to be loved. We rowed on in the moonlight, our little boat full-freighted with youth and hope. I have thought of that evening so often: how happy we were! We never once remembered that care and sorrow might be lying in wait, almost ready for the spring; sure, coming age that would dull all these hopes, chase all these dreams, cast no foreboding chill npon us. Yet I, at least, was unquiet. A crisis in lifb had come. Eyes that had sometimes been averted now dwelt fondly on my own; if looks and tones could speak, what was~there that I might not understand? I have become a convert to your faith, he said, in a low voice, while the ve~ were busy with some topic of their own. What faith do you mean In Destiny. It is impossible to escape; use- less to try. I give up the struggle. And you find submission painful ? Not so: easy and delightful. I remembered the morning such a little while ago; the early warmth, the after coolness. It is well, I thought, that I know you better than you seem to know yourself. The moon went down; clouds overcast thc sky; a-storm was coming up. How dark it grows! said we all, and prophesied a hindrance to to-morrows ride. I may come at any rate, may I not ? whis- pered Mr. Krumbhaar. Shall I be in the way? Not if you wait till afternoon, I~r~plied, mindful of certain household duties. We rowed to shore; one after another mount- ed to the bank; I was the last. Mr. Krumb- haar held out his hand; I could just see him as he stood, the night had grown so black. I waved him playfully aside and sprang forward; and thenI know not howtwas but a stepI missed my footing and was in the water. One can think of millions of things in an in- stant of time. All the past spread itself out plain as a map before me, not a single act for- gotten; and the future, oh my soul, how near! As I rose, wildly struggling and half-suffocated, to the surface, I heard the loud cries overhead, caught one short glimpse of moving figures. Oh, how near they were, and yet they could not see me! I tried to shriek in answer, bnt the rushing water filled my throat and choked my voice. How dreadful! Only a minute ago I was safe there with them, and now I must die! If I had only staid at home, only been careful how I stepped; but there was no use in wishing now. God have mercy on me ! I prayed, and in that frightful struggle tried to think of meeting Him. Suddenly I remembered the flume and the broken wicket. A horrid vision of the swift current and crashing machinery came over me; I made one last despairing effort to rise. Then all strength left me; a deep languor pervaded my being; I floated out powerless; life passed from my lips. It is all over now, I thought. There was a voice. Oh, my darling ! it said, my darling! Where was I? I felt the water chill about me yet, but I could breathe. Was it a dream? Something held me. I heard a shout, She is here! I have got her! My eyes opened; consciousness returned. I saw the dark sky above; dark forms stood on the bank. A strong clasp supported me; I was saved. Thank God! Ay, I thanked Him fervently. Then somehow they reached me from the shore, and I was laid upon the grass; Josie held my head, the girls crowded around frightened and sobbing. I did not speak; I only lay there so glad to find myself alive !till Josie said, with a fresh burst of crying, Oh, Im afraid shes dead! She doesnt move. No, Im not, I said, with a deep sigh. I shall do very well presently. All tongues were loosened; joyful exclama- tions overwhelmed me. I heard them as in a dream, my senses steeped in such delicious lan- guor. I did not even wonder who it was that saved me. 74 HARPERS NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE. Iv. know that I let my heart speak out then for the This little adventure made me the village & st time; that I said what I have been wanting heroine for a week. There was a constant to say all these weeks; what I have been long- stream of callers, anxious to learn every particu- ing to tell you ever since that night ! lar, and what I thought and how I felt. It was I was silent, trembling from emotion which very likely I should tell them that! What did he did not read aright. When at last I looked I think? was my response to these inquiries; up and our eyes metab, what speaking eyes he why, that I should be drowned. How did I had! I almost doubted whethet wisdom and feel? Exceedingly pleased to find myself mis- courage were the best. He took my hand and taken. But if my words were light my thoughts covered it with kisses. I snatched it away. were serious enough. I dont know if much Dont! I said. How you will regret all permanent good results from these close encoun- this to-morrow! ters with death; but I, for one, could not go What do you mean ? he asked, astonished. back and he quite the same person that I was That you are allowing a sudden impulse to before. Life that had looked so settled and overcome your judgment. I was in such dan- secure; years and years at my disposal, to do ger that you do not look at me in a true light; the best with that I could, became so slight, so there is a sacredness about dead peoplewe feel a transient, and yet of such import, viewed in its tenderness for themand you regard me almost relation to all that lies beyond. as if I had come back from the dead. But~ in a I had something to learn myself of what had few days all this ~vill be over; I shall be the befallen. Both gentlemen, it seemed, had same girl that I was. plunged in after me, but it was to Mr. Ledlie And then ? he said, eagerly. that I owed my life. I could have wished the And then you will wish v debt lay elsewhere, grateful though I were. And lence. on had kept si- one amazing thing they all conspired to testify; Again! he exclaimed. Why do you I had been in the water such a little while, speak thus? Do you not know that these doubts Only a minute, said the girls, and I ridiculed are insulting ? them; four or five minutes at most, said Mr. He was displeased, and deeply; it added to Krumbhaar, but I shook my head. One should my trouble. Moreover, I was weak yet and always endeavor to believe disinterested wit- nervous; I began to cry. Terribly ashamed I nesses, particularly when their evidence is backed was of such an exhibition, but I could not stop. by all the medical profession; but how could it The sight of my tears softened him at once; lie have been less than an hour or two, making cv- whispered words of tenderness and caressing. cry allowance? The things remembered, the I am so sorry you are angry, I said, be- terrors felt! Could five minutes hold them all? tween my sobs. I owe you my life, and now Jf that were true, how limitless our capacity to you think me rude and unfeeling. think and suffer! No, no, my dearest, he answered, passion- Any evil results of my involuntary plunge ately. I only am in fault. You are willing were happily escaped. The very next after- to owe your life to me, Katy; will you not let noon I was sitting up in my own room, sobered me make its happiness ? in mind but comfortable in body. Our earliest I could not answer him. Just a whisper, visitor, Josephine excepted, was Mr. Krumb- love, he said; one wordyou havent cour- hnar; after him came my preserver. age, little trembling heart? A look thena It was an awkward interview, at least in the pressure of my hand ; and he leaned toward beginning; I could not forget those words that me. reached me on coming back to life. Oh my It was time to put an end to this. With a darling, my darling! They sounded continu- strong effort I kept back my tears. You ally in my ears. I made some broken attempts must not talk in this way, I insisted. It to express my gratitude; he replied with just as must never happen again. little self-possession. After a time mamma left He was smiling. Indeed ! he answered. us; in compliance, she told me afterward, with But I intend to do it very often. How will his request; and a silence sufficiently embar- you prevent me, Katy? rassing ensued. He was the first to break it. By refusing to listen, I gravely answered. Miss Keith, he said, I have a question And what is the cause of such a rigorous to ask. Pray do not consider it impertinent, decree ? but answer frankly. It was plain that he believed himself invinci- I summoned voice to tell him that I would. ble; he was not to blame for that, perhaps, but How soon were you conscious? Did you it gave me a little nerve. A few days since I understand any incoherent words of mine while might have triumphed in this declaration, might we were in the water ? have played with his feelings. I could not do My face was in a flame. Yes, I stain- it now. mered; but no matter. In a moment of cx- Mr. Ledlie, I resumed, perhaps it would citement people will say things thatthat they not be considered quite suitable for me to tell did not intend, perhaps. you all the truth; yet it seems to me right that He rose and came toward me; he stood by I should treat you with entire candor. my chair. Oh Katy, he said, dont you It is what I wish from you. KATY KEITH. 75 Not long ago I should have heard this avow- al with pleasure; nay, I will go farther and say that it would have made me very happy. You admit it: then why Wait, wait! But now all that is over. You once laid before me your reasons for avoid- ing an imprudent marriage. Do not look as- tonished. I told you I should speak the whole truth. I understood you perfectly; I compre- hended that any interest on my part was warned off by such language.~, I was a fool ! he exclaimed. Forget it. If your beauty, your sweetness have overcome me, why shouldyou revive those buried scruples? My spirit rose a little at that, though he had saved my life. Because I am not one to be taken or left at your pleasure, I answered. I never shall go to any man who feels it a sacri- fice to receive me. And because these scruples are not buried so deep but they will rise again. Go on, he said, bitterly; paint me trifling and capricious as you will. It is not I who am in fault. Your argu- ments would not have convinced me so thor- oughly if they had not first convinced yourself. I see how it is; your pride was wounded, and you will never forgive me. You prefer to ruin your own happiness and mine rather than abate one claim of your offended dignity. Mr. Ledlie, I asked, smiling, is it not a little arrogant of you to assume such entire con- trol of my happiness ? He regarded me with a puzzled air. Have you been coquetting with me all this time ? he said. Is this the sweet, sincere girl who met my attentions with such artless pleasure? I was sincere. Nothing changed me but your own desire. And isthe change past recall ? he cried: but I will not weary you with what he said. You know what lovers are, what they believe, and what they vow. And this was an eloquent one; I did not listen without emotion, sure as I was of the wisdom of my resolve. At last he insinuated that there must he some one else. I do not recognize your right to ask the question, I said; but it is perhaps best that you should know. Yes, there is some one else. I am engaged to Mr. Krumhhaar. Was he more surprised or disappointed or in- censed? Why did you not tell me this at once ? he asked. From a foolish timidity at first; and after- ~vard because we came to my trrjg reasons for re- fusing you. With those the engagement had nothing to do You mean you considered it no obstacle You are discourteous, Mr. Ledlie. Pardon 1 he said, but in no very penitent tone. I can not stop to pick out civil forms of speech. I am sure you did prefer mea month-two weeks ago. Is it not so ? Why did you not make the inquiry then ? I replied, crimsoning. Of one thing you may rest assured, if I preferred you now I would not insult Mr. Krumbhaar by marrying him. Breaking an engagement would he a very light matter compared with that. You force me to speak plainly; my refusal is based solely on yourself and my appreciation of you. My an- swer would have been the same had no other man existed. You make your meaning sufficiently clear, he said, and was about to go, but I detained him. Do not leave me in anger, fentreat- ed. This has been a very painful interview; I have not been able to tell you how grateful I am for your regardyes, and for your willing- ness to forego all prudence for my sake, though I have not been able to accept the sacrifice. And that other debt! I owe you my life; how shall I ever repay you ? You have repaid me already; you have ren- dered my own life valueless. This was not generous, but I could make al- lowance for him. The question rose to my lips of what my life would have been had his prudence continued and my pride been less. But I would not recriminate now. Tell me you are not angry, I went on, holding out my hand. Let us part friends and always meet as such hereafter. I have no desire for friendship from you,~~ he answered, coldly, as he left the room. His displeasure grieved me, but what could I do? It was right, it was safe, to refuse him as I had said, did no other man exist. The love that could hesitate and trifle, advance and re- treat, as his had done, was a poor reliance for the plain prose of life, however charmingly it might mingle with a summers romance. If he had spoken before I understood him quite as well what would the result have been? I fore- saw so clearly his regret when it should he too late, his return to the old views when he had no longer power to act upon them. The love which he now desired so much would be then a clog on his career, a shadow on his path. Still he could not think so just at present, and I was sorry for him I blamed myself for the manner of my rejection; surely I might have softened it a lit- tle, been more kind, more courteous. From these discomforting reflections I was roused by a guest who soon put them all to flight. Ab, those were pleasant days! Brightened by a love that I could trust, that grew hourly dearer, more a part of life. V. Our engagement was not named to any one for a week or two, but Mr. Krumbhaar urged for an early day, and there was nothing to be said against it. It was all settled in family conclave one rainy night when we had no visit- ors, and the next morning I went over to tell Josephine. As it happened I heard greater news than I came to impart. The child met me in a blush- ing, confused fashion that at once awakened curiosity, and us soon as we reached her own peculiar bower the whole amazing truth came out! Mr. Ledlie had come last evening; he 76 HARPERS NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE. loved her; they were engaged! The surprise of the thing almost took away my breath. I did not know how to congratulate my little friend for being in doubt whether I ought not to tell her all about that interview. More particu- larly when she looked up in her innocent way and said, I always thought it was you he cared for, Katy! Me ! I answered, fishing in the troubled waters of my mind for something that was not untrue and not unsympathizing. You always underrate yourself, Josie; people are not very likely to think of me when you are by. And after the sentence was fairly out I do~ibted whether, all things considered, it was quite as truthful as I meant to make it. But Josie, in her timid joy, did not observe the breaks in my congratulations. She was perfectly radiant with happiness; a sweeter case of Loves young dream you could not ask to see. Still she was not so rapt that she could not descend to interest in my communication, and we had a long council over the thousand minuti~ of the affair. It was decided that we must be married together, in church, and by the Episcopal service; a bold in- novation on the established order of things in Weyburn. You may believe that I walked home in a be- wildered frame of mind. Here had I been think- ing of this man so often with a tender pity, turn- ing from my own happiness, as it were, to sym- pathize with himand lo! he was past all need. of consolation! I wondered if pique had any thing to do with it, or interest. I could not help being rather mortified by his speedy recov- ery. I had not wished to make him lastingly wretched, but I did expect to be mourned six months or so. There was a strange sense of incompleteness, unnaturalness, in the sudden transfer of all his hopes to Josephine. What I ought to do about it, or whether I should do any thing, were questions that worried me till I hnd asked mamma. After much thought she de- cided that since Mr. Ledlies real motives ~were unknown to us it was better to be silent, and silent I remained. After this I was free to enjoy my own happi- ness without any cloud of self-reproach. Guert and Idid I tell you Mr. Krumbhaars name was Guert? were constantly together; love and kindness filled up all our days. Im afraid, though, we were not a model pair, for we had not a single quarrel nor a twinge of jealousy. There was no room for them. Guert said the most; but Im not going to admit, for that rea- son, that he felt so much more than I. He had a wondrous talent at idealizing, though. Here was I, plain Katy Keith, a girl that made bread and pies, swept rooms and dusted, often wanted new things and often had to go withouta prac- tical, everyday sort of personage, you see; but he exalted me into a fairy princess. No heroine was ever more poetically charming than he per- sisted in believing me. He discovered a hun- dred beauties for me that I had never thought of: a turn of the wrist, the curve of an eyelash, the rosy tint of finger-nails. If ever a girl were surrounded with homage I was the one. It was very nice; I dont deny it. Ah, Guert, I said to him one day when he had been making some pretty speeoh or other, this is but poor discipline. Why? he asked. Just think how hard it will, be for me to come down to the plain fare of married life after all this nectar and ambrosia. I do not intend that our married life shall be like other peoples. The supply of nectar will be enough to last us all the journey through. You think so now, I said, laughing; but just wait a year or two! I dare say that we shall be a very commonplace couple by that time. We shall have our little fallings-out and makings-up, like the rest of the world; our lit- tle sulkinesses and storms. You really think so ? Indeed I do. In four or five months I ex- pect to lose the last feather from my wings, and come down from an angel into a woman. Not a perfect woman, either. And as for yourself, Mr. Krumbhaar, I dont in the least suppose you will always remain the amiable, complying personage you are at present. You will have a great many things to think of besides divining my wishes. Perhaps you will sometimes be un- reasonable; perhaps I may be a little cross! We shall not always think alike, and neither may be willing to give up our own way. What a dismal picture! No, only a natural one. But one thing I do believe in, Guert. We shall have too much kindness for each other, too much right feeling, to let our disagreements be very serious or lasting. So I hope we may be very happy after all. What a rational little woman this is! cried my lover. Well, Katy, you shall be sober and prosaic as you like; but when a man is about to marry the sweetest girl in the world you must allow him to indulge a few romantic visions. What could the sweetest girl do but smile a gentle acquiescence? MY CASTLES IN SPAIN. THE jasmine round the pillared porch Twined with the honey-suckle grows; The yellow sunflower, like a torch, Within the high-walled garden glows: From out the .elm-tree on the lawn, high up, the clear-voiced linnet trihls; A silvery veil of haze is drawn Athwart the purple of the hills. The fleecy clouds go drifting by, Like ships across the breezy blue; I smell the scent of ripened rye, I see the reapers wading through The billowy tracks of waving wheat, I see their flashing sickles keen; And, sweltering in the summer heat, The spreading corn-fields stretch between. ROMOLA. 77 I sit me down, and idly dream Of summers that have gone before The Past and Present, mingling, seem To meet upon Lifes changing shore I mind me how, one happy day, By yonder rustic stile I stood, And talked of love to Alice May, Close to the margin of the wood. What airy castles did I rear On that sweet promise that she made Our hopes, alas! they disappear; The dreams of youth how quick they fade! My cherished visions all are fled, My castles they have toppled down; And Alice May is long since wed, And owns a handsome house in town. She drives a gilded coach and pair, Arrayed in silks and gleaming pearls, And though not quite so young and fair, And mother of three rosy girls, Enough of bloom is left her yet The lips rich red, the eyes bright blue To stir a feeling of regret, And make me wish she had been true. But though the dreams of youth ares fled, The genial warmth of summer brings New life to hopes that once were dead; My fancy lifts her dappled wings And while the reapers hind the sheaves, I sit and watch the slautwise rain Of sunlight through the lindens leaves, And build my castles oer again. ZR 0 MO L A. flY THE AUTHOR OF ADAM BEDE. CHAPTER XLVII. T ITOS clever arrangements had been un- pleasantly frustrated by trivial incidents which could not enter into a clever mans cal- culations. It was very seldom that he walked with Romola in the evening, yet he had hap- pened to be walking with her precisely on this evening when her presence was supremely in- convenient. Life was so complicated a game that the devices of skill were liable to be de- feated at every turn by air-blown chances, incal- culable as the descent of thistle-down. It was not that he minded about the failure of Spinis plot, but he felt an awkward difficulty in so adjusting his warning to Savonarola on the one band, and to Spini on the other, as not to VOL. XXVII.No. 157.F incur suspicion. Suspicion roused in the popu- lar party might be fatal to his reputation and ostensible position in Florence: suspicion roused in Dolfo Spini might be as disagreeable in its effects as the hatred of a fierce dog not to be chained. If Tito went forthwith to the monastery to warn Savonarola before the monks went to rest, his warning would follow so closely on his de- livery of the forged letters that be could not es- cape unfavorable surmises. He could not warn Spini at once without telling him the true rea- son, since he could not immediately allege the discovery that Savonarola had changed his pur- pose; and he knew Spini well enough to know that his understanding would discern nothing but that Tito had turned round and frus- trated the plot. On the other hand, by defer- ring his warning to Savonarola until the early morning, he would be almost sure to lose the op- portunity of warning Spini that the Frate had changed his mind; and the band of Compag- nacci would come back in all the rage of disap- pointment. This last, however, was the risk he chose, trusting to his power of soothing Spini by assuring him that the failure was due only to the Frates caution. Tito was annoyed. If he had had to smile it would have been an unusual effort to him. He was determined not to encounter Romola again, and he did not go home that night. She watched through the night, and never took off her clothes. She heard the rain become heavier and heavier. She liked to bear the rain: the stormy heavens seemed a safeguard against mens devices, compelling them to in- action. And Romolas mind was again assailed, not only by the utmost doubt of her husband, but by doubt as to her own conduct. What lie might he not have told her? What project might he not have, of which she was still igno- rant? Every one who trusted Tito was in dan- ger; it was useless to try and persuade herself of the contrary. And was not she selfishly list- CHECK.

ROMOLA. 77 I sit me down, and idly dream Of summers that have gone before The Past and Present, mingling, seem To meet upon Lifes changing shore I mind me how, one happy day, By yonder rustic stile I stood, And talked of love to Alice May, Close to the margin of the wood. What airy castles did I rear On that sweet promise that she made Our hopes, alas! they disappear; The dreams of youth how quick they fade! My cherished visions all are fled, My castles they have toppled down; And Alice May is long since wed, And owns a handsome house in town. She drives a gilded coach and pair, Arrayed in silks and gleaming pearls, And though not quite so young and fair, And mother of three rosy girls, Enough of bloom is left her yet The lips rich red, the eyes bright blue To stir a feeling of regret, And make me wish she had been true. But though the dreams of youth ares fled, The genial warmth of summer brings New life to hopes that once were dead; My fancy lifts her dappled wings And while the reapers hind the sheaves, I sit and watch the slautwise rain Of sunlight through the lindens leaves, And build my castles oer again. ZR 0 MO L A. flY THE AUTHOR OF ADAM BEDE. CHAPTER XLVII. T ITOS clever arrangements had been un- pleasantly frustrated by trivial incidents which could not enter into a clever mans cal- culations. It was very seldom that he walked with Romola in the evening, yet he had hap- pened to be walking with her precisely on this evening when her presence was supremely in- convenient. Life was so complicated a game that the devices of skill were liable to be de- feated at every turn by air-blown chances, incal- culable as the descent of thistle-down. It was not that he minded about the failure of Spinis plot, but he felt an awkward difficulty in so adjusting his warning to Savonarola on the one band, and to Spini on the other, as not to VOL. XXVII.No. 157.F incur suspicion. Suspicion roused in the popu- lar party might be fatal to his reputation and ostensible position in Florence: suspicion roused in Dolfo Spini might be as disagreeable in its effects as the hatred of a fierce dog not to be chained. If Tito went forthwith to the monastery to warn Savonarola before the monks went to rest, his warning would follow so closely on his de- livery of the forged letters that be could not es- cape unfavorable surmises. He could not warn Spini at once without telling him the true rea- son, since he could not immediately allege the discovery that Savonarola had changed his pur- pose; and he knew Spini well enough to know that his understanding would discern nothing but that Tito had turned round and frus- trated the plot. On the other hand, by defer- ring his warning to Savonarola until the early morning, he would be almost sure to lose the op- portunity of warning Spini that the Frate had changed his mind; and the band of Compag- nacci would come back in all the rage of disap- pointment. This last, however, was the risk he chose, trusting to his power of soothing Spini by assuring him that the failure was due only to the Frates caution. Tito was annoyed. If he had had to smile it would have been an unusual effort to him. He was determined not to encounter Romola again, and he did not go home that night. She watched through the night, and never took off her clothes. She heard the rain become heavier and heavier. She liked to bear the rain: the stormy heavens seemed a safeguard against mens devices, compelling them to in- action. And Romolas mind was again assailed, not only by the utmost doubt of her husband, but by doubt as to her own conduct. What lie might he not have told her? What project might he not have, of which she was still igno- rant? Every one who trusted Tito was in dan- ger; it was useless to try and persuade herself of the contrary. And was not she selfishly list- CHECK. 78 HARPERS NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE. ening to the promptings of her own pride when she shrank from warning men against him? If her husband was a malefactor, her place was in the prison by his sidethat might be; she was contented to fulfill that claim. But was she, a wife, to allow a husband to inflict the injuries that would make him a malefactor when it might be in her power to prevent them? Prayer seemed impossible to her. The activity of her thought excluded a mental state of which the essence is expectant passivity. The excitement became stronger and stronger. Her imagination, in a state of morbid activity, conjured ~p possible schemes by which, after all, Tito would have eluded her threat; and toward daybreak the rain became less violent, till at last it ceased, the breeze rose again and dispersed the clouds, and the morning fell clear on all the objects around her. It made her uneasiness all the less endurable. She wrapped her mantle round her, and ran up to the loggia, as if there could be any thing in the wide landscape that might determine her action; as if there could be any thing but roofs hiding the line of street along which Savonarola might be walking to- ward betrayal. If she went to her godfather, might she not induce him, without any specific revelation, to take measures for preventing Fm Glrolamo from passing the gates? But that might be too late: Romola thought, with new distress, that she had failed to learn any guiding details from Tito, and it was already long past seven. She must go to San Marco: there was nothing else to be done. She hurried down the stairs, she went out into the street without looking at her sick people, and walked at a swift pace along the Via de Bardi toward the Ponte Vecchio. She would go through the heart of the city; it was the most direct road, and, besides, in the great Piazza there was a chance of encountering her husband, who, by some possibility to which she still clung, might satisfy her of the Frates safety, and leave no need for her to go to San Marco. When she arrived in front of the Palazzo Vecchio she look- ed eagerly into the pillared court; then her eyes swept the Piazza; but the well-known figure, once painted in her heart by young love, and now branded there by eating pain, was nowhere to be seen. She hurried straight on to the Pi- azza del Duomo. It was already full of move- ment: there were worshipers passing up and down the marble steps, there were men pausing for chat, and there were market-people carrying their burdens. Between these moving figures Homola caught a glimpse of her husband. On his way from San Marco he had turned into Nellos shop, and was now leaning against the door-post. As Romola approached she could see that he was standing and talking, with the easiest air in the world, holding his cap in his hand, and shaking back his freshly-combed hair. The contrast of this ease with the bitter anxie- ties he had created convulsed her with indigna- tion: the new vision of his hardness heightened her dread. She recognized Cronaca and two other frequenters of San Marco standing near her husband. It flashed through her mind I will compel him to speak before those men. And her light step brought her close upon him before he had time to move, while Cronaca was saying, Here comes Madonna Romola. A slight shock passed through Titos frame as he felt himself face to face with his wife. She was haggard with her anxious watching, but there was a flash of something else than anxiety in her eyes as she said, Is the Frate gone beyond the gates ? No, said Tito, feeling completely helpless before this woman, and needing all the self- command he possessed to preserve a countenance in which there should seem to be nothing stron- ger than surprise. And you are certain that he is not going? she insisted. I am certain that he is not going. That is enough, said Romola; and she turned up the steps, to take refuge in the Duo- mo till she could recover from her agitation. Tito never had a feeling so near hatred as that with which his eyes followed Romola re- treating up the steps. There were present not only genuine follow- ers of the Frate, but Ser Ceccone, the notary, who at that time, like Tito himselg was secretly an agent of the Mediceans. Ser Francesco di Ser Barone, more briefly known to infamy as Ser Ceccone, was not learned, not handsome, not suc- cessful, and the reverse of generous. He was a traitor without charm. It followed that he was not fond of Tito Melema. CHAPTER XLVIII. cOUNTER-cHEcK. IT was late in the afternoon when Tito re- turned home. Romola, seated opposite the cabinet in her narrow room, copying documents, was about to desist from her work because the light was getting dim, when her husband enter- ed. He had come straight to this room to seek her, with a thoroughly-defined intention, and there was something new to Romola in his man- ner and expression as he looked at her silently on entering, and, without taking off his cap and mantle, leaned one elbow on the cabinet, and stood directly in front of her. Romola, fully assured during the day of the Frates safety, was feeling the reaction of some penitence for the access of distrust and indigna- tion which had impelled her to address her hus- band publicly on a matter that she knew he wished to be private. She told herself that she had probably been wrong. The scheming du- plicity which she had heard even her godfather allude to as inseparable from party tactics might be sufficient to account for the connection with Spini, without the supposition that Tito had ever meant to further the plot. She wanted to atone ROMOLA. 79 for her impetuosity by confessing that she had been too hasty, and for some hours her mind had been dwelling on the possibility that this confession of hers might lead to other frank words breaking the two years silence of their hearts. The silence had been so complete that Tito was ignorant of her having fled from him and come back again; they had never approach- ed an avowal of that past which, both in its young love and in the shock that shattered the love, lay locked away from them like a banquet-room where death had once broken the feast. She looked up at him with that submission in her glance which belonged to her state of self-reproof; but the subtle change in his face and manner arrested her speech. For a few moments they remained silent, looking at each other. Tito himself felt that a crisis was come in his married life. The husbands determination to mastery, which lay deep below all blandness and beseechingness, had risen permanently to the surface now, and seemed to alter his face, as a face is altered by a hidden muscular tension with which a man is secretly throttling or stamp- ing out the life from something feeble, yet dan- gerous. Romola, he began, in the cool, liquid tone that made her shiver, it is time that we should understand each other. He paused. That is what I most desire, Tito, she said, faintly. Her sweet pale face, with all its anger gone, and nothing but the timidity of self-doubt in it, seemed to give a marked predominance to her husbands dark strength. You took a step this morning, Tito went on, which you must now yourself perceive to have been uselesswhich exposed you to remark, and may involve me in serious practical difficul- ties. I acknowledge that I was too hasty; I am sorry for any injustice I may have done you. Romola spoke these words in a fuller and firm- er tone; Tito, she hoped, would look less hard when she had expressed her regret, and then she could say other things. I wish you once for all to understand, he said, without any change of voice, that such collisions are incompatible with our position as husband and wife. I wish you to reflect on the mode in which you were led to take that step, that the process may not be repeated. That depends chiefly on you, Tito, said Romola, taking fire slightly. It was not what she had at all thought of saying, but we see a very little way before us in mutual speech. You would say, I suppose, answered Tito, that nothing is to occur in future which can excite your unreasonable suspicions. You were frank enough to say last night that you have no belief in me. I am not surprised at any ex- aggerated conclusion you may draw from slight premises, but I wish to point out to you what is likely to be the fruit of your making such ex- aggerated conclusions a ground for interfering in affairs of which you are ignorant. Your at- tention is thoroughly awake to what I am say- ing? He paused for a reply. Yes, said Romola, flushing in irrepressible resentment at this cold tone of superiority. Well, then, it may possibly not be very long before some other chance words or inci- dents set your imagination at work devising crimes for me, and you may perhaps rush to the Palazzo Vecchio to alarm the Signoria and set the city in an uproar. Shall I tell you what may be the result? Not simply the dis- grace of your husband, to which you look for- ward with so much courage, but the arrest and ruin of many among the chief men in Florence, including Messer Bernardo del Nero. Tito had meditated a decisive move, and he had made it. The flush died out of Romolas face, and her very lips were palean unusual effect with her, for she was little subject to fear. Tito perceived his success. You would perhaps flatter yourself, he went on, that you were performing a heroic deed of deliverance; you might as well try to turn locks with fine words as apply such notions to the politics of Florence. The question now is, not whether you can have any belief in me, but whether,now you have been warned, you will dare to rush, like a blind man with a torch in his hand, among intricate affairs of which you know nothing. Romola felt as if her mind were held in a vice by Titos: the possibilities he had indicated were rising before her with terrible clearness. I am too rash, she said. I will try not to be rash. Remember, said Tito, with unsparing in- sistence, that your act of distrust toward me this morning might, for aught you knew, have had more fatal effects than that sacrifice of your husband which you have learned to contemplate without flinching. Tito, it is not so, Romola burst forth, in a pleading tone, rising and going nearer to him, with a desperate resolution to speak out. It is false that I would willingly sacrifice you. It has been the greatest effort of my life to cling to you. I went away in my anger two years ago, and I came back again because I was more bound to you than to any thing else on earth. But it is useless. You shut me out from your mind. You affect to think of me as a being too unreasonable to share in the knowledge of your affairs. You will be open with me about nothing. She looked like his good angel pleading with him, as she bent her face toward him with di- lated eyes, and laid her hand upon his arm. But~ Romolas touch and glance no longer stirred any fibre of tenderness in her husband. The good- humored, tolerant Tito, incapable of hatred, in- capable almost of impatience, disposed always to be gentle toward the rest of the world, felt himself becoming strangely hard toward this wife whose presence had once been the stron- gest influence he had known. With all his 80 HARPERS NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE. softness of disposition he had a masculine ef- fectiveness of intellect and purpose which, like sharpness of edge, is itself an energy, working its way without any strong momentum. Ro- mola had an energy of her own which thwarted his, and no man, who is not exceptionally fee- ble, will endure being thwarted by his wife. Marriage must be a relation either of sympathy or of conquest. No emotion darted across his face as he heard Romola for the first time speak of having gone away from him. His lips only looked a little harder as he smiled slightly and said My Romola, when certain conditions are ascertained we must make up our minds to them. No amount of wishing will fill the Arno, as your people say, or turn a plum into an orange. I have not observed even that prayers have much efficacy that way. You are so constituted as to have certain strong impres- sions inaccessible to reason: I can not share those impressions, and you have withdrawn all trust from me in consequence. You have changed toward me; it has followed that I have changed toward you. It is useless to take any retrospect. We have simply to adapt our- selves to altered conditions.~~ Tito, it would not be useless for us to speak openly, said Romola, flushing with the sort of exasperation that comes from using living mus- cle against some lifeless insurmountable resist- ance. It was the sense of deception in you that changed me, and that has kept us apart. And it is not true that I changed first. You changed toward me the night you first wore that chain armor. You had some secret from meit was about that old manand I saw him again yesterday. Tito, she went on, in a tone of agonized entreaty, if you would once tell me every thing, let it be what it mayI would not mind painthat there might be no wall be- tween us! Is it not possible that we could be- gin anew life? This time there was a flash of emotion across Titos face. He stood perfectly still; but the flash seemed to have whitened him. He took no notice of Romolas appeal, but, after a mo- ments pause, said, quietly, Your impetuosity about trifles, Romola, has a freezing influence that would cool the baths of Nero. At these cutting words Romola shrank and drew herself up into her usual self-sustained attitude. Tito went on: If by that old man you mean the mad lacopo di Nola who attempt- ed my life and made a strange accusation against me, of which I told you nothing because it would have alarmed you. to no purpose, he, ~poor wretch, has died in prison. I saw his name in the list of dead. I know nothing about his accusation, said Romola. But I know he is the man whom I saw with the rope round his neck in the Duomo the man whose portrait Piero di Cosimo paint- ed, grasping your arm as he saw him grasp it the day the French enteredthe day you first wore the armor.,~ And where is he now, pray? said Tito, still pale, but governing himself. He was lying lifeless in the street from starvation, said Romola. I revived him with bread and wine. I brought him to our door, but he refused to come in. Then I gave him some money, and he Went away without telling me any thing. But he had found out that I was your wife. Who is he ? A man half mad, half imbecile, who was once my fathers servant in Greece, and who has a rancorous hatred toward me because I got him dismissed for theft. Now you have the whole mystery, and the further satisfaction of knowing that I am again in danger of assassination. The fact of my wearing the armor, about which you seem to have thought so much, must have led you to infer that I was in danger from this man. Was that the reason you chose to cultivate his acquaintance and invite him into the house ? Romola was mute. To speak was only like rushing with bare breast against a shield. Tito moved from his leaning posture, slowly took off his cap and mantle, and pushed back his hair. He was collecting himself for some final words. And Romola stood upright look- iug at him as she might have looked at some on- coming deadly force, to be met only by silent endurance. We need not refer to these matters again, Romola, he said, precisely in the same tone as that in which he had spoken at first. It is enough if you will remember that the next time your generous ardor leads you to interfere in political affairs you are likely, not to save any one from danger, but to be raising scaffolds anti setting houses on fire. You are not yet a suffi- ciently ardent Piagnone to believe that Messer Bernardo del Nero is the Prince of Darkness, and Messer Francesco Valori the archangel Mi- chael. I think I need demand no promise from you? I have understood you too well, Tito. It is enough, he said, leaving the room. Romola turned round with despair in her face and sank into her seat. Oh, God, I have triedI can not help it. We shall always be divided. Those words passed silently through her mind. Unless, she said aloud, as if some sudden vision had startled her into speech unless misery should come and join us! Tito, too, had a new thought in his mind aft- er he had closed the door behind him. With the project of leaving Florence as soon as his life there had become a high enough stepping-stone to a life elsewhere, perhaps at Rome or Milan, there was now for the first time associated a de- sire to be free from Romola, and to leave her behind him. She had ceased to belong to the desirable furniture of his life: there was no pos- sibility of an easy relation between them with- out genuineness on his part. Genuineness im- plied confession of the past, and confession in- volved a change of purpose. But Tito had as little bent that way as a leopard has to lap milk when its teeth are grown. From all relations ROMOLA. 81 that were not easy and agreeable we know that Tito shrank: why should he cling to them? And Romola had made his relations difficult with others besides herself. He had had a troublesome interview with Dolfo Spini, who had come back in a rage after an ineffectual soaking with rain and long waiting in ambush, and that scene between Romola and himself at Nellos door, once reported in Spinis ear, might be a seed of something more unmanageable than suspicion. But now, at least, he believed that he had mastered Romola by a terror which ap- pealed to the strongest forces of her nature. He had alarmed her affection and her conscience by the shadowy image of consequences; he had ar- rested her intellect by hanging before it the idea of a hopeless complexity in affairs which defied any moral judgment. Yet Tito was not at ease. The world was not yet quite cushioned with velvet, and, if it had been, he could not have abandoned himself to that softness with thorough enjoyment; for before he went out again this evening he put on his coat of chain armor. CHAPTER XLIX. THE PYRAMID OF VANITIES. THE wintry days passed for Romola as the white ships pass one who is standing lonely on the shore passing in silence and sameness, yet each bearing a hidden burden of coming change. Titos hint had mingled so much dread with her interest in the progress of public affairs that she had begun to court ignorance rather than knowledge. The threatening German Em- peror was gone again; and, in other ways be- sides, the position of Florence was alleviated; but so much distress remained that Romolas active duties were hardly diminished; and in these, as usual, her mind found a refuge from its doubt. She dared not rejoice that the relief which had come in extremity and had appeared to just- ify the policy of the Frates party was making that party so triumphant, that Francesco Valori, hot-tempered chieftain of the Piagnoni, had been elected Gonfaloniere at the beginning of the year, and was making haste to have as much of his own liberal way as possible during his two months of power. That seemed for the moment like a strengthening of the party most attached to freedom, and a reinforcement of protection to Savonarola; but Romola was now alive to every suggestion likely to deepen her foreboding, that whatever the present might be, it was only an unconscious brooding over the mixed germs of Change which might any day become tragic. And already by Carnival time, a little after mid- February, her presentiment was confirmed by the signs of a very decided change: the Medi- ceans had ceased to be passive, and were openly exerting themselves to procure the election of Bernardo del Nero, as the new Gonfaloniere. On the last day of the Carnival, between ten and eleven in the morning, Romola walked out, according to promise, toward the Corso degli Albizzi, to fetch her cousin Brigida, that they might both be ready to start from the Via de Bardi early in the afternoon, and take their places at a window which Tito had had reserved for them in the Piazza della Signoria, ~where there was to be a scene of so new and striking a sort, that all Florentine eyes must desire to see it. For the Piagnoni were having their own way thoroughly about the mode of keeping the Carnival. In vain Dolfo Spini and his compan- ions had struggled to get up the dear old masques and practical jokes, well spiced with indecency. Such things were not to be in a city where Christ had been declared king. Romola set out in that languid state of mind with which every one enters on a long day of sight-seeing, purely for the sake of gratifying a child, or some dear childish friend. The day was certainly an epoch in carnival-keeping; but this phase of reform had not touched her enthu- siasm: and she did not know that it was an epoch in her own life, when another lot would begin to be no longer secretly but visibly en- twined with her own. She chose to go through the great Piazza that she might take a first survey of the unparalleled sight there while she was still alone. Entering it from the south, she saw something monstrous and many-colored in the shape of a pyramid, or, rather, like a huge fir-tree, sixty feet high, with shelves on the branches, widening and widening toward the base till they reached a circumfer- ence of eighty yards. The Piazza was full of life: slight young figures, in white garments, with olive-wreaths on their heads, were moving to and fro about the base of the pyramidal tree, carrying baskets full of bright-colored things; and maturer forms, some in the monastic frock, some in the loose tunics and dark red caps of artists, were helping and examining, or else re- treating to various points in the distance to sur- vey the wondrous whole; while a considerable group, among whom Romola recognized Piero di Cosimo, standing on the marble steps of Orgag- nas Loggia, seemed to be keeping aloof in dis- content and scorn. Approaching nearer, she paused to look at the multifarious objects ranged in gradation from the base to the summit of the pyramid. There were tapestries and brocades of immodest design, pictures and sculptures held too likely to incite to vice; there were boards and tables for all sorts of games, playing-cards along with the blocks for printing them, dice, and other appa- ratus for gambling; there were worldly music- books, and musical instruments in all the pretty varieties of lute, drum, cymbal, and trumpet; there were masks audmasquerading dresses used in the old carnival shows; there were handsome copies of Ovid, Boccaccio, Petrarch, Pulci, and other books of a vain or impure sort; there were all the implements of feminine vanityrouge- pots, false hair, mirrors, perfumes, powders, and 82 HARPERS NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE. transparent veils intended to provoke inquisitive glances: lastly, at the very summit, there was the unflattering effigy of a probably mythical Venetian merchant, who was understood to have offered a heavy sum for this collection of market- able abominations, and, soaring above him in surpassing ugliness, the symbolic figure of the old debauched Carnival. This was the preparation for a new sort of bonfirethe Burning of Vanities. Hidden in the interior of the pyramid was a plentiful store of dry fuel and gunpowder; and on this last day of the festival, at evening, the pile of vanities was to be set ablaze to the sound of trumpets, and the ugly old Carnival was to tumble into the flames amidst the songs of reforming triumph. This crowning act of the new festivities could hardly have been prepared but for a peculiar or- ganization which had been started by Savonarola two years before. The mass of the Florentine boyhood and youth was no longer left to its own genial promptings toward street mischief and crude dissoluteness. Under the training of Fra Domenico, a sort of lieutenant to Savonarola, lads and striplings, the hope of Florence, were to have none but pure words on their lips, were to have a zeal for unseen good that should put to shame the lukewarmness of their elders, and were to know no pleasures save of an angelic sort singing divine praises and walking in white robes. It was for them that the ranges of seats had been raised high against the walls of the Duomo; and they had been used to hear Savon- arola appeal to them as the future glory of a city especially appointed to do the work of God. These fresh-cheeked troops were the chief agents in the regenerated merriment of the new Carnival, which was a sort of sacred parody of the old. Had there been bonfires in the old time? There was to be a bonfire now, con- suming impurity from off the earth. Had there been symbolic processions? There were to be processions now, but the symbols were to be white robes and red crosses and olive wreaths emblems of peace and innocent gladnessand the banners and images held aloft were to tell the triumphs of goodness. Had there been dan.- cing in a ring under the open sky of the piazza, to the sound of choral voices chanting loose songs? There was to be dancing in a ring now, but dancing of monks and laity in fraternal love and divine joy, and the music was to be the music of hymns. As for the collections from street passengers, they were to be greater than evernot for gross and superfluous suppers, but for the benefit of the hungry and needy; and, besides, there was the collecting of the Anathema, or the Vanities to be laid on the great pyramidal bonfire. Troops of young inquisitors went from house to house on this exciting business of asking that the Ana~thema should be given up to them. Per- haps after the more avowed vanities had been surrendered, Madonna, at the head of the household, had still certain little reddened balls brought from the Levant, intended to produce on a sallow cheek a sudden bloom of the most ingenuous falsity? If so, let her bring them down and cast them into the basket of doom. Or, perhaps, she had ringlets and coils of dead hair ?if so, let her bring them to the Street- door, not on her head, but in her hands, and publicly renounce the Anathema which hid the respectable signs of age under r~ ghastly mock- ery of youth. And, in reward, she would hear fresh young voices pronounce a blessing on her and her house. The beardless inquisitors, organized into little regiments, doubtless took to their work very willingly. To coerce people by shame, or other spiritual pelting, to the giving up of things it will probably vex them to part with, is a form of piety to which the boyish mind is most readi- ly converted; and if some obstinately wicked men got enraged and threatened the whip or the cudgel, this also was exciting. Savonarola him- self evidently felt about the training of these boys the difficulty weighing on all minds with noble yearnings toward great ends, yet with that imperfect perception of means which forces a re- sort to some supernatural constraining influence as the only sure hope. The Florentine youth had had very evil habits and foul tongues: it seemed at first an unmixed blessing when they were got to shout Viva Gesit ! But Savona- rola was forced at last to say from the pulpit, There is a little too much shouting of Viva Gesh P This constant utterance of sacred words brings them into contempt. Let me have no more of that shouting till the next Festa. Nevertheless, as the long stream of white- robed youthfulness, with its little red crosses and olive wreaths, had gone to the Duomo at dawn this morning to receive the communion from the hands of Savonarola, it was a sight of beauty; and, doubtless, many of those young souls were laying up memories of hope and awe that might save them from ever resting in a merely vulgar view of their work as men and citizens. There is no kind of conscious obedi- ence that is not an advance on lawlessness? and these boys became the generation of men who fought greatly and endured greatly in the last struggle of their Republic. Now, in the inter- mediate hours between the early communion and dinner-time, they were making their last peram- bulations to collect alms and vanities, and this was why Romola saw the slim white figures moving to and fro about the base of the great pyramid. What think you of this folly, Madonna Romola ? said a brusque voice close to her ear. Your Piagnoni will make linferno a pleasant prospect to us, if they are to carry things their own way on earth. Its enough to fetch a cud- gel over the mountains to see painters, like Lorenzo di Credi and young Baccio there, help- ing to burn color out of life in this fashion. My good Piero, said Romola, looking up and smiling at the grim man, even you must be glad to see some of these things burned. Look at those gewgaws and wigs and rouge- ROMOLA. 83 pots: I have heard you talk as indignantly against those things as Fra Girolamo himself. What then ? said Piero, turning round on her sharply. I never said a woman should make a black patch of herself against the back- ground. Va! Madonna Antigone, its a shame for a woman with your hair and shoulders to run into such nonsenseleave it to women who are not worth paiuting. What! the most holy Virgin herself has always been dressed well thats the doctrine of the Church: talk of heresy, indeed! And I should like to know what the excellent Messer Bardo would have said to the burning of the divine poets by these Frati, who are no better an imitation of men than if they were onions with the bulbs uppermost. Look at that Petrarca sticking up beside a rouge-pot: do the idiots pretend that the heavenly Laura was a painted harridan? And Boccaccio, now: do you mean to say, Madonna Romolayou who are fit to be a model for a wise St. Cath- erine of Egyptdo you mean to say you have never rend the stories of the immortal Messer Giovanni ? It is true I have read them, Piero, said Romola. Some of them a great many times over, when I was a little girl. I used to get the book down when my father was asleep, and I could read to myself. Ebbene 7 said Piero, in a fiercely challeng- ing tone. There are some things in them I do not want ever to forget, said Romola; but you must confess, Piero, that a great many of those stories are only about low deceit for the lowest ends. Men do not want books to make them think lightly of vice, as if life were a vulgar joke. And I can not blame Fra Girolamo for teaching that we owe our time to something better. Yes, yes, its very well to say so now youve read them, said Piero, bitterly, turning on his heel and walking away from her. Romola too walked on, smiling at Pieros in- nuendo, with a sort of tenderness toward the odd painters anger, because she knew that her father would have felt something like it. For herself, she was conscious of no inward collision with the strict and sombre view of pleasure which tended to repress poetry in the attempt to repress vice. Sorrow and joy have each their peculiar narrowness; and a religious enthusiasm like Savonarolas, which ultimately blesses mankind by giving the soul a strong propulsion toward sympathy with pain, indignation against wrong, and the subjugation of sensual desire, must al- ways incur the reproach of a great negation. Romolas life had given her an affinity for sad- ness which inevitably made her unjust toward merriment. That subtle result of culture which we call Taste was subdued by the need for deeper motive; just as the nicer demands of the palate are annihilated by urgent hunger. Moving ha- bitually among scenes of suffering, and carrying womans heaviest disappointment in her heart, the severity which allied itself with self-renounc- ing beneficent strength had no dissonance for her. CHAPTER L. TESSA ABROAD AND AT HOME. ANOTHER figure easily recognized by usa figure not clad in black, but in the old red, green, and whitewas approaching the Piazza that morning to see the Carnival. She came from aji opposite point, for Tessa no longer lived on the hill of San Giorgio. After what had hap- pened there with Baldassarre, Tito had thought it best for that and other reasons to find her a new home, but still in a quiet airy quarter, in a house bordering on the wide garden grounds north of the Porta Santa Croce. Tessa was not come out sight-seeing without special leave. Tito had been with her the even. ing before, and she had kept back the entreaty which she felt to be swelling her heart and throat until she saw him in a state of radiant ease, with one arm round the sturdy Lillo, and the other resting gently on her own shoulder as she tried to make the tiny Ninna steady on her legs. She was sure then that the weariness with which he had come in and flung himself into his chair had quite melted away from his brow and lips Tessa had not been slow at learning a few small stratagems by which she might avoid vexing Naldo and yet have a little of her own way. She could read nothing else, but she had learned to read a good deal in her husbands face. And certainly the charm of that bright, gen- tle-humored Tito who woke up under the Log- gia de Cerchi on a Lenten morning five years before, not having yet given any hostages to de- ceit, never returned so nearly as in the person of Naldo, seated in that straight-backed, carved arm-chair which he had provided for his comfort when he came to see Tessa and the children. Tito himself was surprised at the growing sense of relief which he felt in these moments. No guile was needed toward Tessa: she was too ig- norant and too innocent to suspect him of any thing. And the little voices calling him Bab- bo were very sweet in his ears for the short while that he heard them. When he thought of leaving Florence he never thought of leaving Tessa and the little ones behind. He was very fond of these round-cheeked, wide-eyed human things that clung about him and knew no evil of him. And wherever affection can spring, it is like the green leaf and the blossompure, and breathing purity, whatever soil it may grow in. Poor Romola, with all her self-sacrificing effort, was really helping to harden Titos nature by chilling it with a positive dislike which had be- forehand seemed impossible in him; but Tessa kept open the fountains of kindness. Ninna is very good without me now, be- gan Tessa, feeling her request rising very high in her throat, and letting Ninna sear herself on the floor. I can leave her with Monna Lisa any time, and if she is in the cradle and cries, Lillo is as sensible as can behe goes and thumps Monna Lisa. Lillo, whose great dark eyes looked all the darker because his curls were of a light brown 84 HARPERS NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE. like his mothers, jumped off Babbos knee, and went forthwith to attest his intelligence by thumping Monna Lisa, who was shaking her head slowly over her spinning at the other end of the room. A wonderful boy! said Tito, laughing. Isnt he ? said Tessa, eagerly, getting a little closer to him, and I might go and see the Carnival to-morrow, just for an hour or two, mightnt I? Oh, you wicked pigeon! said Tito, pinch- ing her cheek; tlose are your longings, are they? What have you to do with carnivals now you are an old woman with two children ? But old women like to see things, said Tessa, her lower lip hanging a little. Monna Lisa said she should like to go, only shes so deaf she cant hear what is behind her, and she thinks we couldnt take care of both the chil- dren. No, indeed, Tessa, said Tito, looking rath- er grave, you must not think of taking the children into the crowded streets, else I shall be angry. But I have never been into the Piazza with- out leave, said Tessa, in a frightened, pleading tone, since the Holy Saturday, and Nofri I think is dead, for you know the poor ,nadre died; and I shall never forget the carnival I saw once; it was so prettyall roses, and a king and queen under themand singing. I liked it better than the San Giovanni. But theres nothing like that now, my Tes- sa. They are going to make a bonfire in the Piazzathats all. But I can not let you go out by yourself in the evening. Oh, no, no! I dont want to go in the even- ing. I only want to go and see the procession hy daylight. There will be a processionis it not true ? Yes, after a sort, said Tito, as lively as a flight of cranes. You must not expect roses and glittering kings and queens, my Tessa. How- ever, I suppose any string of people to be called a procession will please your blue eyes. And theres a thing they have raised in the Piazza de Signori for the bonfire. You may like to see that. But come home early, and look like a grave little old woman; and if you see any men with feathers and swords keep out of their way: they are very fierce, and like to cut old womens heads off. Santa Madonna! where do they come from? Ah! you are laughing; it is not so bad. But I will keep away from them. Only, Tessa went on in a whisper, putting her lips near Nal- dos ear, if I might take Lillo with me! He is very sensible. But who will thump Monna Lisa then, if she doesnt~hear ? said Tito, finding it difficult not to laugh, but thinking it necessary to look serious. No, Tessa, you could not take care of Lillo if you got into a crowd, and hes too heavy for you to carry him. It is true, said Tessa, rather sadly, and he likes to run away. I forgot that. Then I will go alone. But now look at Ninnavon have not looked at her enough. Ninna was a blue-eyed thing, at the tottering, tumbling agea fair solid, which, like a loaded die, found its base with a constancy that war- ranted prediction. Tessa went to snatch her up, and when Babbo was paying due attention to the recent teeth and other marvels, she said, in a whisper, And shall I buy some confetti for the children ? Tito drew some small coins from his searsel- la, and poured them into her palm. That will buy no end, said Tessa, delight- ed at this abundance. I shall not mind go- ing without Lillo so much, if I bring him some- thing. So Tessa set out in the morning toward the great Piazza where the bonfire was to be. She did not think the February breeze cold enough to demand further covering than her green wool- en dress. A mantle would have been oppress- ive, for it would have hidden a new necklace and a new clasp, mounted with silver, the only ornamental presents Tito had ever made her. Tessa did not think at all of showing her figure, for no one had ever told her it was pretty; but she was quite sure that her necklace and clasp were of the prettiest sort ever worn by the rich- est contadina, and she arranged her white hood over her head so that the front of her necklace might be well displayed. These ornaments, she considered, must inspire respect for her as the wife of some one who could afford to buy them. She tripped along very cheerily in the Febru- ary sunshine, thinking much of the purchases for the little ones, with which she was to fill her small basket, and not thinking at all of any one who might be observing her. Yet her descent from her upper story into the street had been watched, and she was being kept in sight as she walked by a person who had often waited in vain to see if it were not Tessa who lived in that house to which he had more than once dogged Tito. Baldassarre was carrying a pack- age of yarn: he was constantly employed in that way, as a means of earning his scanty bread, and keeping the sacred fire of vengeance alive; and he had come out of his way this morning, as he had often done before, that he might pass by the house to which he had follow- ed Tito in the evening. His long imprisonment had so intensified his timid suspicion, and his be- lief in some diabolic fortune favoring Tito, that he had not dared to pursue him, except under cover of a crowd or of the darkness; he felt, with instinctive horror, that if Titos eyes fell upon him, he should again be held up to oblo- quy, again be dragged away; his weapon would be taken from him, and he should be cast help- less into a prison-cell. His fierce purpose had become as stealthy as a serpents, which de- pends for its prey on one dart of the fang. Justice was weak and unfriended; and he could not hear again the voice that pealed the prom- ise of vengeance in the Duomo: he had been ROMOLA. 85 there again and again; but that voice, too, had apparently been stifled by cunning, strong-arm- ed wickedness. For a long while Baldassarres ruling thought was to ascertain whether Tito still wore the armor; for now at last his faint- ing hope would have been contented with a suc- cessful stab on this side the grave; but he would never risk his precious knife again. It was a weary time he had had to wait for the chance of answering this question by touching Titos back in the press of the street. Since then the knowledge that the sharp steel was useless, and that he had no hope but in some new device, had fallen with leaden weight on his enfeebled mind. A dim vision of winning one of those two wives to aid him came before him continu- ally, and continually slid away. The wife who had lived on the hill was no longer there. If he could find her again he might grasp some thread of a project, and work his way to more clearness. And this morning he had succeeded. He was quite certain now where this wife lived, and as he walked, bent a little under his burden of yarn, yet keeping the green and white figure in sight, his mind was dwelling upon her and her circumstances as feeble eyes dwell on lines and colors, trying to interpret them into consistent significance. Tessa had to pass through various long streets without seeing any other sign of the Carnival than unusual groups of the country people in their best garments, and that disposition in ev- ery body to chat and loiter which marks the early hours of a holiday before the spectacle has begun. Presently, in her disappointed search for remarkable objects, her eyes fell on a man with a peddlers basket before him, who seemed to be selling nothing but little red crosses to all the passengers. A little red cross would be pretty to hang up over her bed; and it would also help to keep off harm, and would perhaps make Ninna stronger. Tessa went to the other side of the street, that she might ask the ped- dler the price of the crosses, fearing that they would cost a little too much for her to spare from her purchase of sweets. The peddlers back had been turned toward her hitherto, but when she came near him she recognized an old acquaintance of the Mercato, Bratti Ferraveccbj, and accustomed to feel that she was to avoid old acquaintances, she turned away again, and passed to the other side of the street. But Brattis eye was too well practiced in looking out at the corner after possible customers for her movement to have escaped him, and she was presently arrested by a tap on the arm from one of the red crosses. Young woman, said Bratti, as she unwil- lingly turned her head, you come from some castello a good way off it seems to me, else youd never think of walking about, this blessed Car- nival, without a red cross in your hand. Santa Madonna! Four white quattrini is a small price to pay for your soulprices rise in purga- tory, let me tell you. Oh, I should like one, said Tessa, hastily, but I couldnt spare four white quattrini. Bratii had at first regarded Tessa too ab- stractedly as a mere customer to look at her with any scrutiny, but when she began to speak he exclaimed, By the head of San Giovanni, it must be the little Tessa, and looking as fresh as a ripe apple! What, youve done none the worse, then, for running away from father Nof- ri? You were in the right of it, for he goes on crutches now, and a crabbed fellow with crutches is dangerous; he can reach across the house and beat a woman as he sits. Im married, said Tessa, rather demurely, remembering Naldos command that she should behave with gravity; and my husband takes great care of me. Ab, then youve fallen on your feet! Nofri said you were good-for-nothing vermin; but what then? An ass may bray a good while before he shakes the stars down. I always said you did well to run away, and it isnt often Brattis in the wrong. Well, and so youve got a husband and plenty of money? Then youll never think much of giving four white quattrini for a red cross. I get no profit; but what with the famine and the new religion, all other mer- chandise is gone down. You live in the country where the chestnuts are plenty, eh? Youve never wanted for polenta, I can see. No, Ive never wanted any thing, said Tessa, still on her guard. Then you can afford to buy a cross. I got a Padre to bless them, and you get blessing and all for four quattrini. It isnt for the profit; I hardly get a danaro by the whole lot. But then theyre holy wares, and its getting harder and harder work to see your way to Paradise the very Carnival is like Holy Week, and the least you can do to keep the Devil from getting the upper hand is to buy a cross. God guard you! think what the Devils tooth is? Youve seen him biting the man in San Giovanni, I should hope ? Tessa felt much teased and frightened. Oh, Bratti, she said, with a discomposed face, I want to buy a great many confetti: Ive got little Lillo and Ninna at home. And nice colored sweet things cost a great deal. And they will not like the cross so well, though I know it would be good to have it. Come, then, said Bratti, fond of laying up a store of merits by imagining possible extor- tions and then heroically renouncing them, since youre an old acquaintance you shall have it for two quattrini. Its making you a present of the cross, to say nothing of the bless- ing. Tessa was reaching out her two quattrini witb tremhling hesitation, when Bratti said, abrupt- ly, Stop a bit! Where do you live? Oh, a long way oW she answered, almost automatically, being preoccupied with her quat- trini; beyonl San Ambrogio, in the Via Pic- cola, at the top of the house where the wood is stacked below. 86 HARPERS NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE. Very good, said Bratti, in a patronizing tone; then Ill let you have the cross on trust, and call for the money. So yon live inside the gates? Well, well, I shall be passing. No, no ! said Tessa, frightened lest Naldo should be angry at this revival of an old acquaint- ance. I can spare the money. Take it now. No,~~ said Bratti, resolutely; Im not a hard-hearted peddler. Ill call and see if youve got any rags, and you shall make a bargain. See, heres the cross; and theres Pippos shop, not far behind you: you can go and fill your basket, and I must go and get mine empty. AddlO, piccina I Bratti went on his way, and Tessa, stimulated to change her money into confetti before further accidents, went into Pippos shop, a little flut- tered by the thought that she had let Bratti know more about her than her husband would approve. There were certainly more dangers in coming to see the Carnival than in staying at home; and she would have felt this more strong- ly if she had known that the wicked old man, who bad wanted to kill her husband on the hill, was still keeping her in sight. But she had not noticed the man with the burden on his back. The consciousness of having a small basketful of things to make the children glad dispersed her anxiety, and as she entered the Via de Libraj her face had its usual expression of child-like content. And now she thought there was really a procession coming, for she saw white robes and a banner, an& her heart began to palpitate with expectation. She stood a little aside, but in that narrow street there was the pleasure of be- ing obliged to look very close. The banner was pretty: it was the Holy Mother with the Babe, whose love for her Tessa had believed in more and more since she had had her babies; and the figures in white had not only green wreaths on their heads, but little red crosses by their side, which caused her some satisfaction that she also had her red cross. Certainly they looked as beautiful as the angels on the clouds, and to Tessas mind they too had a back-ground of cloud, like every thing else that came to her in life. How and whence did they come? She did not mind much about knowing. But one thing sur- prised her as newer than wreaths and crosses; it was that some of the white figures carried baskets between them. What could the baskets be for? But now they were very near, and, to her as- tonishment, theywheeled aside and came straight up to her. She trembled as she would have done if St. Michael in the picture had shaken his head at her, and was conscious of nothing but terrified wonder till she saw close to her a round boyish face, lower than her own, and heard a treble voice saying, Sister, you carry the Anathema about you. Yield it up to the bless- ed Gesh, and He will adorn you with the gems of His grace. Tessa was only more frightened, understand- ing nothing. Her first conjecture settled on her basket of sweets. They wanted that, these alarming angels. Oh, dear, dear! She looked down at it. No, sister, said a taller youth, pointing, to her necklace and the clasp of her belt, it is those vanities that are the Anathema. Take off that necklace and unclasp that belt, that they may be burned in the holy Bonfire of Vanities, and save you from burning. It is the truth, my sister, said a still taller youth, evidently the archangel of this band. Listen to these voices speaking the divine message. You already carry a red cross: let that be your only adornment. Yield up your necklace and belt, and you shall obtain grace. This was too much. Tessa, overcome with awe, dared not say no, but she was equally unable to render up her beloved necklace and clasp. Her pouting lips were quivering, the tears rushed to her eyes, and a great drop fell. For a moment she ceased to see any thing; she felt nothing but confused terror and misery. Suddenly a gentle hand was laid on her arm, and a soft, wonderful voice, as if the Holy Ma- donna were speaking, said, Do not be afraid; no one shall harm you. Tessa looked up and saw t~ lady in black, with a young heavenly face and loving hazel eyes. She had never seen any one like this lady before, and under other circumstances might have had awe-struck thoughts about her; but now every thing else was overcome by the sense that loving protection was near her. The tears only fell the faster, relieving her swell- ing heart, as she looked up at the heavenly face, and, putting her hand to her necklace, said, sob- bingly, I cant give them to be burned. My hus- bandhe bought them for meand they are so prettyand NinnaOb, I wish Id never come! Do not ask her for them, said Romola, speaking to the white-robed boys in a tone of mild authority. It answers no good end for people to give up such things against their will. That is not what Fra Girolamo approves: he would have such things given up freely. Madonna Romolas word was not to be re- sisted, and the white train moved on. They even moved with haste, as if some new object had caught their eyes; and Tessa felt with bliss that they were gone, and that her necklace and clasp were still with her. Oh, I will go back to the house, she said, still agitated; I will go no where else. But if I should meet them again, and you not be there? she added, expecting every thing from this heavenly lady. Stay a little, said Romola. Come with me under this doorway, and we will hide the necklace and clasp, and then you will be in no danger. She led Tessa nuder the arch-way, and said, Now, can we find room for your necklace and belt in your basket? Ah! your basket is full of crisp things that will break: let us be careful and lay the heavy necklace under them. It was like a change in a dream to Tessa ROMOLA. 87 the escape from nightmare into floating safety and joyto find herself taken care of by this lady, so lovely, and powerful, and gentle. She let Romola unfasten her necklace and clasp, while she herself did nothing but look up at the face that bent over her. They are sweets for Lillo and Ninna, she said, as Homola carefully lifted up the light par- cels in the basket, and placed the ornaments be- low them. Those are your children? said Romola, smiling. And you would rather go home to them than see any more of the Carnival? Else you have not far to go to the Piazza de Signori, and there you would see the pile for the great bonfire. No; oh, no! said Tessa, eagerly; I shall never like bonfires again. I will go back. You live at some caste/b, doubtless, said Romola, not waiting for an answer. Toward which gate do you go? Toward Por Santa Croce. Come, then, said Romola, taking her by the hand and leading her to the corner of a street nearly opposite. If you go down there, she said, pausing, you will soon be in a straight road. And I must leave you now, because some one else expects me. You will not be fright- ened. Your pretty things are quite safe now. Addio. Addio, Madonna, said Tessa, almost in a whisper, not knowing what else it would be right to say; and in an instant the heavenly lady was gone. Tessa turned to catch a last glimpse, but she only saw the tall gliding figure vanish round the projecting stone-work. So she went on her way in wonder, longing to be once more safely housed with Monna Lisa, undesirous of carnivals for evermore. Baldassarre had kept Tessa in sight till the moment of her parting with Romola: then he went away with his bundle of yarn. It seemed to him that he had discerned a clew which might guide him if he could only grasp the necessary details firmly enough. He had seen the two wives together, and the sight had brought to his conceptions that vividness which had been want- ing before. His power of imagining facts need- ed to be reinforced continually by the senses. The tall wife was the noble and rightful wife; she had the blood in her that would be readily kindled to resentment; she would know what scholarship was, and how it might lie locked in by the obstructions of the stricken body, like a treasure buried by earthquake. She could be- lieve him: she would be inclined to believe him if he proved to her that her husband was un- faithful. Women cared about that: they would take Vengeance for that. If this wife of Titos loved him, she would have a sense of injury which Baldassarres mind dwelt on with keen longing, as if it would be the strength of another Will added to his own, the strength of another mind to form devices. Both these wives had been kind to Baldas- sarre, and their acts toward him, being bound up with the very image of them, had not van- ished from his memory; yet the thought of their pain could not present itself to him as a check. To him it seemed that pain was the order of the world for all except the hard and base. If any were innocent, if any were noble, where could the utmost gladness lie for them? Where it lay for himin unconquerable hatred and tri- umphant vengeance. But he must be cautious: he must watch this wife in the Via de Bardi, and learn more of her; for even here frustration was possible. There was no power for him now but in patience. CHAPTER U. MONNA BEIGIDA 5 cONVERsION. WIzEN Romola said that some one else ex- pected her she meant her cousin Brigida, but she was far from suspecting how much that good kinswoman was in need of her. Returning to- gether toward the Piazza, they had descried the company of youths coming to a stand before Tessa, and when Romola, having approached near enough to see the simple little contadinas distress, said, Wait for me a moment, cousin, Monna Brigida said, hastily, Ah, I will not go on: come for me to Bonis shop; I shall go back there. The truth was, Monna Brigida had a con- sciousness on the one hand of certain vanities carded on her person, and on the other of a growing alarm lest the Piagnoni should be right in holding that rouge, and false hair, and pearl embroidery endamaged the soul. Their serious view of things filled the air like an odor; no- thing seemed to have exactly the same flavor as it used to have; and there was the dear child Romola, in her youth and beauty, leading a life that was uncomfortably suggestive of rigorous de- mands on woman. A widow at fifty-five whose satisfaction has been largely drawn from what she thinks of her own person, and what she be- lieves others think of it, requires a great fund of imagination to keep her spirits buoyant. And Monna Brigida had begun to have frequent struggles at her toilet. If her soul would pros- per better without them, was it really worth while to put on the rouge and the braids? But when she lifted up the hand-mirror and saw a sallow face with baggy cheeks, and crows-feet that were not to be dissimulated by any simper- ing of the lipswhen she parted her gray hair, and let it lie in simple Piagnone fashion round her face, her courage failed. Monna Berta would certainly burst out laughing at her, and call her an old hag, and as Monna Berta was really only fifty-two, she had a superiority which would make the observation cutting. Every woman who was not a Piagnone would give a shrug at the sight of her, and the men would accost her as if she were their grandmother. Whereas, at fifty-five a woman was not so very oldshe only required making up a little. So 88 HARPERS NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE. the rouge and the braids and the embroidered sired. Her anger and mortification were fast berretta went on again, and Monna Brigida was giving way to spiritual alarm. Monna Berta, satisfied with the accustomed effect; as for her iind that cloud of witnesses, highly-dressed soci- neck, if she covered it up, people might suppose ety in general, were not looking at her, and she it was too old to show, and on the contrary, was surrounded by young monitors, whose white with the necklaces round it, it looked better robes, and wreaths, and red crosses, and dreadful than Monna Bertas. This very day, when she candor, had something awful in their unusual- was preparing for the Piagnone Carnival, such ness. Her Franciscan confessor, J?ra Cristoforo, a struggle had occurred, and the conflicting of Santa Croce, was not at hand to reinforce her fears and longings which caused the struggle distrust of Dominican teaching, and she was caused her to turn back and seek refuge in the helplessly possessed and shaken by a vague sense druggists shop rather than encounter the col- that a supreme warning was come to her. Un- lectors of the Anathema when Romola was not visited by the least suggestion of any other course by her side, that was open to her, she took the scarf that was But Monna Brigidawas not quite rapid enough held out, and rubbed her cheeks, with trembling in her retreat. She had been descried, even be- suhmissivcness. fore she turned away, by the white-robed boys It is well, madonna, said the second youth. in the rear of those who wheeled round toward It is a holy beginning. And when you have Tessa, and the willingness with which Tessa taken those vanities from your head, the dew of was given up was, perhaps, slightly due to the heavenly grace will descend on it. The infu- fact that part of the troop had already accosted sion of mischief was getting stronger, and put- a personage carrying more markedly upon her ting his hand to one of the jeweled pins that the dangerous weight of the Anathema. It fastened her braids to the berretta, he drew it happened that several of this troop were at the out. The heavy black plait fell down over youngest age taken into peculiar training; and Monna Brigidas face, and dragged the rest of a small fellow of ten, his olive wreath resting the head-gear forward. It was a new reason for above cherubic cheeks and wide brown eyes, not hesitating: she put up her hands hastily, his imagination really possessed with a hovering undid the other fastenings, and flung down into awe at existence as something in which great the basket of doom her beloved crimson velvet consequences impended on being good or bad, berretta, with all its unsurpassed embroidery of his longings nevertheless running in the direc- seed-pearls, and stood an unrouged woman, with tion of mastery and mischief, was the ~rst to gray hair pushed backward from a face where reach Monna Brigida and place himself across certain deep lines of age had triumphed over her path. She felt angry, and looked for an embonpoint. open door, but there was not one at baud, and But the berretta was not allowed to lie in the by attempting to escape now she would only basket. With impish zeal the youngsters lifted make things worse. But it was not the chern- it up, and held it pitilessly, with the false hair bic-faced young one who first addressed her; it dangling. was a youth of fifteen, who held one handle of See, venerable mother, said the taller youth, a wide basket. what ugly lies you have delivered yourself Venerable mother ! he began, the blessed from! And now you look like the blessed Saint Jesus commands you to give up the Anathema Anna, the mother of the Holy Virgin.~, which you carry upon you. That cap embroi- Thoughts of going into a convent forthwith, dered with pearls, those jewels that fasten up and never showing herself in the world again, your false hairlet them be given up and sold were rushing through Monna Brigidas mind. for the poor; and cast the hair itself away from There was nothing possible for her but to take you, as a lie that is only fit for burning. Doubt- care of her soul. Of course, there were specta- less, too, you have other jewels under your silk tors laughing: she had no need to look round to mantle. assure herself of that. Well! it would, perhaps, Yes, lady, said the youth at the other han- be better to be forced to think more of Paradise. dle, who had many of Fra Girolamos phrases by But at the thought that the dear accustomed heart, they are too heavy for you: they are world was no longer in her choice, there gathered heavier than a millstone, and are weighting you some of those hard tears which just moisten for perdition. Will you adorn yourself with the elderly eyes, and she could see but dimly a large hunger of the poor, and be proud to carry Gods rough hand holding a red cross, which was sud- curse upon your head ? denly thrust before her over the shoulders of the In truth you are old, buona madre, said boys, while a strong guttural voice said, Only the cherubic boy, in a sweet soprano. You four quattrini, madonna, blessing and all! Buy look very ugly with the red on your cheeks and it. Youll find a comfort in it now your wigs that black, glistening hair, and those fine things. gone. Deb! what are we sinners doing all our It is only Satan who can like to see you. Your lives? Making soup in a basket, and getting Angel is sorry. He wants you to rub away the nothing but the scum for our stomachs. Better red. buy a blessing, madonna! Only four quattrini; The little fellow snatched a soft silk scarf from the profit is not so much as the smell of a danaro, the basket, and held it toward Monna Brigida, and it goes to the poor. that she might use it as her guardian angel de- Monna Brigida, in dim-eyed confusion, was J~OMOLA. 89 C a a a a a u 0 0 a -4 51 a 0 a proceeding to the further submission of reaching Dear cousin, dont be distressed, said Romo- money from her embroidered scarsella, at pres- in, smitten with pity, yet hardly able to help ent hidden by her silk mantle, when the group smiling at the sudden apparition of her kins- round her, which she had not yet entertained woman in a genuine, natural guise, strangely the idea of escaping, opened before a figure as contrasted with all memories of her. She took welcome as an angel loosing prison bolts, the black drapery from her own head, and threw Romola, look at me! said Monna Brigida, it over Monna Brigidas. There, she ~vent in a piteous tone, putting out both her hands. on, soothingly, no one will remark you now. The white troop was already moving away, We will torn down the Via del Palagio and go with a slight consciousness that its zeal about straight to our house. the head-gear had been superabundant enough They hastened away, Monna Brigida grasp- to afford a dispensation from any further demand ma Romolas hand tightly as if to get a stronger for penitential offerings. assurance of her being actually there. 90 HAHPEHS NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE. Ah, my Romola, my dear child, said the short fat woman, hurrying with frequent steps to keep pace with the majestic young figure heside her. What an old scarecrow I am! I must be goodI mean to be good Yes, yes; buy a cross ! said the guttnral voice, while the rough hand was thrust once more before Monna Brigida; for Bratti was not to 1)e abashed by Romolas presence into reuounc- lug a probable customer, and had quietly follow- ed up their retreat. Only four quattrini, bless- ing and alland if there was any profit, it would all go to the poor. Monna Brigida would have heen compelled to pause, even if she had been in a less submis- sive mood. She put up one hand deprecatingly to arrest iRomolas remonstrance, and with the other reached out a grosso, worth many white quattrini, saying, in no entreating tone Take it, good man, and begone. Youre in the right, madonna, said Bratti, taking the coin quickly, and thrusting the cross into her hand, Ill not offer you change, for I might as well rob you of a mass. What! we ]nust all be scorched a little, hut youll come off the easier; better fall from the window than the roof. A good Easter and a good year to you! Well, Ilomola, cried Monna Brigida, pa- thetically, as Bratti left them, if Im to be a Piagnone, its no matter how I look Dear cousin, said Romola, looking at her affectionately, you dont know how much bet- ter you look than you ever did before. I see now how good-natured your face is, like your- self. That red and finery seemed to thrust them- selves forward and hide expression. Ask our Piero or any other painter if he would not rather paint your portrait now than before. I think all lines of the human face have something either touching or grand, unless they seem to come from low passions. How fine old men are, like my godfather! Why should not old women look grand and simple ? Yes, when one gets to he sixty, my Romola, said Brigida, relapsing a little; but Im only fifty-five, and Monna Berta and every body but its no use: I will be good, like you. Your mother, if shed been alive, would have been as old as I amwe were cousins together. One mast either die or get old. But it doesnt mat- ter about being old, if ones a Piagnone. THE SMALL HOUSE AT ALLINGTON. boys, said the earl. This was his lordships answer when Eames declined to dine at the Manor House, because he would be expected home. But Im so hadly off for clothes, my lord, pleaded Johnny. I tore my trowsers in the hedge. There will he nohody there besides us two and Dr. Crofts. The doctor will forgive you when he hears the story; and as for me, I didnt care if you hadnt a stitch to yonr back. Youll have company back to Guestwick, so come along. Eames had no further excuse to offer, and therefore did as he was hidden. He was by no means as much at home with the earl now as during those minutes of the combat. He would rather have gone home, being somewhat ashamed of heing seen in his present tattered and bare- headed condition by the servants of the house; and moreover, his mind would sometimes re- vert to the scene which had taken place in the garden at Allington. But he found himself obliged to ohey the earl, and so he walked on with him through the woods. The earl did not say very much, being tired and somewhat thoughtful. In what little he did say he seemed to be specially hurt by the in- gratitude of the bull toward himself. I never teased him, or annoyed him in any way.~ I suppose they are dangerous beasts P said CHAPTER XXII. Eames. LORD DR GUEST AT ROME. Not a hit of it, if theyre properly treated. THE Earl and John Eames, after their es- It must have been my handkerchieg I suppose. cape from the bull, walked up to the Manor I remember that I did blow my nose. house together. You can write a note to He hardly said a word in the way of thanks your mother, and Ill send it hy one of the to his assistant. Where should I have been

90 HAHPEHS NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE. Ah, my Romola, my dear child, said the short fat woman, hurrying with frequent steps to keep pace with the majestic young figure heside her. What an old scarecrow I am! I must be goodI mean to be good Yes, yes; buy a cross ! said the guttnral voice, while the rough hand was thrust once more before Monna Brigida; for Bratti was not to 1)e abashed by Romolas presence into reuounc- lug a probable customer, and had quietly follow- ed up their retreat. Only four quattrini, bless- ing and alland if there was any profit, it would all go to the poor. Monna Brigida would have heen compelled to pause, even if she had been in a less submis- sive mood. She put up one hand deprecatingly to arrest iRomolas remonstrance, and with the other reached out a grosso, worth many white quattrini, saying, in no entreating tone Take it, good man, and begone. Youre in the right, madonna, said Bratti, taking the coin quickly, and thrusting the cross into her hand, Ill not offer you change, for I might as well rob you of a mass. What! we ]nust all be scorched a little, hut youll come off the easier; better fall from the window than the roof. A good Easter and a good year to you! Well, Ilomola, cried Monna Brigida, pa- thetically, as Bratti left them, if Im to be a Piagnone, its no matter how I look Dear cousin, said Romola, looking at her affectionately, you dont know how much bet- ter you look than you ever did before. I see now how good-natured your face is, like your- self. That red and finery seemed to thrust them- selves forward and hide expression. Ask our Piero or any other painter if he would not rather paint your portrait now than before. I think all lines of the human face have something either touching or grand, unless they seem to come from low passions. How fine old men are, like my godfather! Why should not old women look grand and simple ? Yes, when one gets to he sixty, my Romola, said Brigida, relapsing a little; but Im only fifty-five, and Monna Berta and every body but its no use: I will be good, like you. Your mother, if shed been alive, would have been as old as I amwe were cousins together. One mast either die or get old. But it doesnt mat- ter about being old, if ones a Piagnone. THE SMALL HOUSE AT ALLINGTON. boys, said the earl. This was his lordships answer when Eames declined to dine at the Manor House, because he would be expected home. But Im so hadly off for clothes, my lord, pleaded Johnny. I tore my trowsers in the hedge. There will he nohody there besides us two and Dr. Crofts. The doctor will forgive you when he hears the story; and as for me, I didnt care if you hadnt a stitch to yonr back. Youll have company back to Guestwick, so come along. Eames had no further excuse to offer, and therefore did as he was hidden. He was by no means as much at home with the earl now as during those minutes of the combat. He would rather have gone home, being somewhat ashamed of heing seen in his present tattered and bare- headed condition by the servants of the house; and moreover, his mind would sometimes re- vert to the scene which had taken place in the garden at Allington. But he found himself obliged to ohey the earl, and so he walked on with him through the woods. The earl did not say very much, being tired and somewhat thoughtful. In what little he did say he seemed to be specially hurt by the in- gratitude of the bull toward himself. I never teased him, or annoyed him in any way.~ I suppose they are dangerous beasts P said CHAPTER XXII. Eames. LORD DR GUEST AT ROME. Not a hit of it, if theyre properly treated. THE Earl and John Eames, after their es- It must have been my handkerchieg I suppose. cape from the bull, walked up to the Manor I remember that I did blow my nose. house together. You can write a note to He hardly said a word in the way of thanks your mother, and Ill send it hy one of the to his assistant. Where should I have been THE SMALL HOUSE AT ALLINGTON. 91 if you had not come to me ? he had exclaimed immediately after his deliverance; hut having said that he didnt think it necessary to say much more to Eames. But he made himself very pleasant, and by the time he had reached the house his companion was almost glad that he had heen forced to dine at the Manor House. And now well have a drink, said the earl. I dont know how you feel, but I never was so thirsty in my life. Two servants immediately showed themselves, and evinced some surprise at Johnnys appear- ance. Has the gentleman hurt hisself, my lord? asked the butler, looking at the blood upon our friends face. He has hurt his trowsers the worst, I be- lieve, said the earl. And if he was to put on any of mine theyd be too short and too big, wouldnt they? I am sorry you should be so uncomfortable, but you mustnt mind it for once. I dont mind it a bit, said Johnny. And Im sure I dont, said the earl. Mr. Eames is going to dine here, Vickers. Yes, my lord. And his hat is down in the middle of the nineteen acres. Let three or four men go for it. Three or four men, my lord ! Yes, three or four men. Theres something gone wrong with that bull. And you must get a boy with a pony to take a note into Guestwick to Mrs. Eames. Oh, dear, Im better now, and he put down the tumbler from which hed been drinking. Write your note here, and then well go and see my pet pheasants before dinner. Vickers and the footman knew that something had happened of much moment, for the earl was usually very particular about his dinner- table. He expected every guest who sat there to be dressed in such guise as the fashion of the day demanded; and he himself, though his morning costume was by no means brilliant, never dined, even when alone, without having put himself into a suit of black, with a white cravat, and having exchanged the old silver hunting-watch, which he carried during the day tied round his neck by a bit of old ribbon, for a small gold watch, with a chain and seals, which in the evening always dangled over his waist- coat. iDr. Gruffen had once been asked to din- ner at Guestwick Manor. Just a bachelors chop, said the earl; for theres nobody at home but myself. Whereupon Dr. Gruffen had come in colored trowsersand had never again been asked to dine at Guestwick Manor. All this Vickers knew well; and now his lord- ship had brought young Eames home to dine with him with his clothes all hanging about him in a manner which Vickers declared in the serv- ants hall wasnt more than half decent. There- fore they all knew that something very particu- lar must have happened. Its some trouble about the bull, I know, said Vickers; but bless you, the bull couldnt have tore his things in that way! Eames wrote his note, in which he told his mother that he had had an adventure with Lord De Guest, and that his lordship had insisted on bringing him home to dinner. I have torn my trowsers all to pieces, he added in a post- script, and have lost my hat. Every thing else is all right. He was not aware that the earl also sent a short note to Mrs. Eames: DEAR MADA1Rran the earls note your son has, under Providence, probably saved my life. I will leave the story for him to tell. He has been good enough to ac- company me home, and will return to Gusetwick after din- ner with Dr. Crofte, who dines here. I congratulate you on having a son with so much cool courage and good feel ing. Your very faithful servant, DR GUEST. GuasTwscx MANoR, Thursday, October, 156-. And then they went to see the pheasants. Now Ill tell you what, said the earl. I advise you to take to shooting. Its the amuse- ment of a gentleman when a man chances to have the command of game. But Im always up in London. No, youre not. Youre not up in London now. You always have your holidays. If you choose to try it, Ill see that you have shooting enough while youre here. Its better than go- ing to sleep under the trees. Ha, ha, ha! I wonder what made you lay yourself down there. You hadnt been fighting a bull that day? No, my lord. I hadnt seen the bull then. Well; you think of what Ive been saying. When I say a thing, I mean it. You shall have shooting enough if you have a mind to try it. Then they looked at the pheasants, and pottered about the place till the earl said it was time to dress for dinner. Thats hard upon you, isnt it ? said he. But, at any rate, you can wash your hands, and get rid of the blood. Ill be down in the little drawing-room five minutes before seven, and I suppose Ill find you there. At five minutes before seven Lord De Guest came into the small drawing-room, and found Johnny seated there, with a book before him. The earl was a little fussy, and showed by his manner that he was not quite at his ease, as some men do when they have any piece of work on hand which is not customary with them. He held something in his hand, and shuffled a little as he made his way up the room. He was dressed, as usual, in black; but his gold chain was not, as usual, dangling over his waistcoat. Eames, he said, I want you to accept a little present from mejust as a memorial of our affair with the bull. It will make you think of it sometimes, when Im perhaps gone. Oh, my lord Its my own watch, that I have.been wear- ing for some time; but Ive got another: two or three, I believe, somewhere up stairs. You mustnt refuse me. I cant bear being refused. There are two or three little seals, too, which I have worn. I have taken off the one with my arms, because thats of no use to you, and it is to me. It doesnt want a key, bnt winds np at the handle, in this way ; and the earl proceed- ed to explain the natnre of the toy. My loi~d, you think too mnch of what hap- ened to-day, said Eames, stammering. No, I dont; I think very little about it. I know what I think of. Put the watch in yonr pocket before the doctor comes. There; I hear his horse. Why didnt he drive over? and then he could have taken you hack ? I can walk very well. Ill make that all ri~ht. The servant shall ride Croftss horse, and bring back the little phaeton. How dyou do, doctor? You know Earnes, I suppose? You neednt look at him in that way. His leg is not broken; its only his trowsers. And then the earl told the story of the hull. Johnny will become qnite a hero in town, said Crofts. 92 HARPERS NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE. ft j:~ !SB. ~ALLI5ER AND LADY DUMI3ELLO. THE SMALL HOUSE AT ALLINGTON. 93 Yes; I fear hell get the most of the credit; and yet I was at it twice as long as he was. Ill tell you what, young men, when I got to that gate I didnt think id breath enough left in me to get over it. Its all very well jumping into a hedge when youre only two-and-twenty; but when a man comes to be sixty he likes to take his time about such things. Dinner ready, is it? So am I. I quite forgot that mutton chop of yours to-day, doctor. But I suppose a man may eat a good dinner after a fight with a bull ? The evening passed by without any very pleasurable excitement, and I regret to say that the earl went fast to sleep in the drawing-room as soon as he had swallowed his cup of coffee. During dinner he had been very courteous to both his guests, but toward Eames he had used a good-humored and almost affectionate famil- iarity. He had quizzed him for having been found asleep under the tree, telling Crofts that he had looked very forlorn So that I havent a doubt about his being in love, said the earl. And he had asked Johnny to tell the name of the fair one, bringing up the remnants of his half-forgotten classicalities to bear out the joke. If I am to take more of the severe Falernian, said he, laying his hand on the decanter of port, I must know the ladys name. Whoever she be, Im well sure you need not blush for her. What! you refuse to tell! Then Ill drink no more. And so the earl had walked out of the dining-room; but not till he had perceived by his guests cheeks that the joke had been too true to be pleasant. As he ~vent, however, he leaned with his hand on Eamess shoulder, and the servants looking on saw that the young man was to be a favorite. Hell make him his heir, said Vickers. I shouldnt wonder a bit if he dont make him his heir. But to this the footman objected, endeavoring to prove to Mr. Vickers that, in accordance with the law of the land, his lordships second cousin, once removed, whom the earl had never seen, but whom he was supposed to hate, must be his heir. A hearl can never choose his own heir, like you or me, said the footman, laying down the law. Cant he, though, really now? Thats very hard on him, isnt it ? said the pretty house- maid. Pshaw ! said Vickers: you know nothing about it. My lord could make young Eames his heir to-morrow; that is, the heir of his property. He couldnt make him a heari, because that must go to the heirs of his body. As to his leaving him the place here, I dont just know how thatd be; and Im sure Richard dont. But suppose he hasnt got any heirs of his body ? asked the pretty housemaid, who was rather fond of putting down Mr. Vickers. lie must have heirs of his body, said the butler. Every body has em. If a man dont know em himself, the law finds em out. And then Mr. Vickers walked away, avoiding further dispute. In the mean time, the earl was asleep up VOL. XXVII.No. 157.G stairs, and the two young men from Guestwicl~ did not ~lnd that they could amuse themselves with any satisfaction. Each took up a book; but there are times at which a man is quite un able to read, and when a book is only a cover for his idleness or dullness. At. last, Dr. Crofts suggested, in a whisper, that they might as well begin to think of going home. Eh; yes; what? said the earl: Im not asleep. In answer to which the doctor said that he thought hed go home, if his lordship would let him order his horse. But the earl was again fast bound in slumber, and took no further notice of the proposition. Perhaps we could get off without waking him, suggested Eames, in a whisper. Eh; what ? said the earl. So they both resumed their books, and submitted themselves to their martyrdom for a further period of fifteen minutes. At the expiration of that time the footman brought in tea. Eh; what? tea! said the earl. Yes, well have a little tea. Ive heard every word youve been saying. It was that assertion on the part of the earl which always made Lady Julia so angry. You can not have heard what I have been saying, Theodore, because I have said no- thing, she would reply. But I should have heard it if you had, the earl would rejoin, snap- pishly. On the present Occasion neither Crofts nor Eames contradieted him, and he took his tea and swallowed it while still three parts asleep. If youll allow me, my lord, I think Ill order my horse, said the doctor, Yes; horseyes said the earl, nodding. But what are you to do, Eames, if I ride ? said the doctor. Ill walk, whispered Eames, in his very low- est voice. Whatwhatwhat ? said the earl, jump- ing up on his feet. Oh, ah, yes; going awq, are you? I suppose you might as well as sit here and see me sleeping. But, doctorI didnt snore, did I ? Only occasionally. Not loud, did I? Come, Eames, did I snore loud ? Well, my lord, you did snore rathek loud two or three times. Did I ? said the earl, in a voice of great disappointment. And yet, do you know, I heard every word you said. The small phaeton had been already ordered, and the two young men started back to Guest- wick together, a servant from the house riding the doctors horse behind them. Look here, Eames, said the earl, as they parted on the steps of the hall door. Your~ going back to town the day after to-morrow you say, so I shant see you again ? No, my lord, said Johnny. Look you here, now. I shall be up for the Cattle-show hefore Christmas~ You must dine with me at my hotel, on the twenty-second of December, Pawkins, in Jermyn Street; seven oclock, sharp. Mind you do not forget, now. 9 HARPERS NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE. Put it down in your pocket-book when you get home. Good-by, doctor; good-by. I see I must stick to that mutton chop in the middle of t~he day. And then they drove off. Hell make him his heir for certain, said Vickers to himself, as he slowly returned to his own quarters. You were returning from Allington, I sup- pose, said Crofts, when you came across Lord De Guest and the bull ? Yes: I just walked over to say good-by to them. Did you find them all well ? I only saw one. The other two were out. Mrs. Dale, was it ? No; it was Lily. Sitting alone, thinking of her fine London lover, of course? I suppose we ought to look upon her as a very lucky girl. I have no doubt she thinks herself so. Im sure I dont know, said Johnny. I believe hes a very good young man, said the doctor; but I cant say I quite liked his manner. I should think not, said Johnny. But then in all probability he did not like mine a bit better, or perhaps yours either. And if so its all fair. I dont see that its a bit fair. Hes a snob, said Eames; and I dont believe that I am. He had taken a glass or two of the earls severe Falernian, and was disposed to a more generous confidence, and perhaps also to stron- ger language, than might otherwise have been the case. No; I dont think he is a snob, said Crofts. Had he been so, Mrs. Dale would have per. c~ived jt. Youll see, said Johnny, touching up the earls horse with energy as he spoke. Youll see. A man who gives himself airs is a snob; and he gives himself airs. And I dont believe hes a straightforward fellow. It was a bad day for us all when he came among them at Allington. I cant say that I see that. I do. But mind, I havent spoken a word of this to any one. And I dont mean. What would be the good? I suppose she must marry him now? Of course she must. And be wretched all her life. Oh-h-h-h 1 and he muttered a deep groan. Ill tell you what it is, Crofts. He is going to take the sweetest girl out of this country that ever was in it, and he dont deserve her. I dont think she can be compared to her sister, said Crofts, slowly. What; not Lily ? said Barnes, as though the proposition made by the doctor were one that could not hold water for a minute. I have always thought that Bell was the more admired of the two, said Crofts. Ill tell you what, said Eames. I have never yet set my eyes on any human creature whom I thought so beautiful as Lily Dale. And now that beast is going to marry her! Ill tell ~ou what, Crofts; Ill manage to pick a quarrel with him yet. Whereupon the doctor, seeing the nature of the complaint from which his com- panion was suffering, said nothing more, either about Lily or about Bell. Soon after this Barnes was at his own door, and was received there by his m6ther and sister with all the enthusiasm due to a hero. He has saved the earls life! Mrs. Barnes had ex- claimed to her daughter oa reading Lord De Guests note. Oh, goodness ! and she threw herself back upon the sofa almost in a fainting condition. Saved Lord De Guests life ! said Mary. Yesunder Providence, said Mrs. Enmes, as though that latter fact added much t6 her sons good deed. But how did he do it ? By cool courage and good feeling; so his lordship says. But I wonder how he really did do it? Whatever way it was, hes torn all his clothes and lost his hat, said Mary. I dont care a bit about that, said Mrs. Eames. I wonder whether the earl has any interest at the Income-tax. What a thing it would be if he could get Johnny a step! It would be seventy pounds a year at once. He was quite right to stay and dine when his lord- ship asked him. And so Dr. Crofts is there. It couldnt have been any thing in the doctor- ing way, I suppose. No, I should say not; because of what he says of his trowsers. And so the two ladies were obliged to wait for Johns return. How did you do it, John? said his mo- ther, embracing him, as soon as the door was opened. How did you save the earls life ? said Mary, who was standing behind her mother. Would his lordship really have been killed if it had not been for you ? asked Mrs. Eames. And was he very much hurt ? asked Mary. Oh, bother, said Johnny, on whom the re- sults of the days work, together with the earls Falernian, had made some still remaining im- pression. On ordinary occasions Mrs. Enmes would have felt hurt at being so answered by her son; but at the present moment she re- garded him as standing so high in general fa- vor that she took no offense. Oh, Johnny, do tell us. Of course we must be very anxious to know it all. Theres nothing to tell, except that a bull ran at the earl as I was going by; so I went into the field and helped him, and then he made me stay and dine with him. But his lordship says that you saved his life, said Mary. Under Providence, added their mother. At any rate, he has given me a gold watch and chain, said Johnny, drawing the present out of his pocket. I wanted a watch badly. All the same, I didnt like taking it. It would have been very wrong to refuse, THE SMALL HOUSE AT ALLINGTON. 95 said his mother. And I am so glad you have been so fortunate. And look here, Johnny: when a friend like that comes in your way, dont turn your back on him. Then, at last, he thawed beneath their kindness, and told them the whole of the story. I fear that, in recounting the earls efforts with the spud, he hardly spoke of his patron with all that defer- ence which would have beenappropriate. CHAPTER XXIII. ILR. PLANTAGENET PALLISER. A WEEK passed over Mr. Crosbies head at Courcy Castle without much inconvenience to him from the well-known fact of his matrimo- nial engagement. Both George IDe Courcy and John De Courcy had in their different ways charged him with his offense, and endeavored to annoy him by recurring to the subject; but he did not care much for the wit or malice of George or John De Courcy. The countess had hardly alluded to Lily Dale after those fe~v words which she said on the first day of his visit, and seemed perfectly willing to regard his doings at Allington as the occupation natural to a young man in such a position. He had been seduced down to a dull country house, and had, as a matter of course, taken to such amusements as the place afforded. He had shot the partridges and made love to the young lady, taking those little recreations as compensation for the tedium of the squires society. Perhaps he had gone a little too far with the young lady; but then no one knew better than the countess how difficult it is for a young man to go far enough without going too far. It was not her business to make herself a censor on a young mans conduct. The blame, no doubt, rested quite as much with Miss Dale as with him. She was quite sorry that any young lady should be disappointed; but if girls will be imprudent, and set their caps at men above their mark, they must en- counter disappointment. With such language did Lady Dc Courcy speak of the affair among her daughters, and her daughters altogether agreed with her that it was out of the question that Mr. Crosbie should marry Lily Dale. From Alexandrina he encountered during the week none of that raillery which he had expected. He had promised to explain to her before he left the castle all the circumstances of his ac- quaintance with Lily, and she at last showed herself determined to demand the fulfillment of this promise; but previous to that she said nothing to manifest either offense or a lessened friendship. And, I regret to say, that in the in- tercourse which had taken place between them that friendship was by no means less tender than it had been in London. And when will you tell me what you prom- ised ? she asked him one afternoon, speaking in a low voice, as they were standing together at the window of the billiard-room, in that idle half hour which always occurs before the neces- sity for ditiner preparation has come. She had been riding, and was still in her habit, and he had returned from shooting. She knew that she looked more than ordinarily well in her tall straight hat and riding gear, and was wont to hang about the house, walking skillfully with her upheld drapery, during this period of the day. It was dusk, but not dark, and there was no artificial light in the billiard-room. There had been some pretense of knocking about the balls, but it had been only pretense. Even Diana, she had said, could not have played billiards in a habit. Then she had put down her mace, and they had stood talking together in the recess of a large bow-window. And what did I promise ? said Crosbie. You know well enough. Not that it is a matter of any special interest to me; only, as you undertook to promise, of course my curiosity has been raised. If it be of no special interest, said Crosbie, you will not object to absolve me from my promise. That is just like you, she said. And how false you men always are! You made up your mind to buy my silence on a distasteful subject by pretending to offer me your future confidence; and now von tell me that you do not mean to confide in me. You begin by telling me that the matter is one that does not in the least interest you. That is so false again! You know very well what I meant. Do you remember what you said to me the day you came? and am I not bound to tell you after that that your mar- riage with this or that young lady is not mat- ter of special interest to me? Still, as your friend Well, as my friend! I shall be glad to know But I am not going to beg for your confidence; only I tell you this fairly, that no man is so mean in my eyes as a man who fights under false colors. And am I fighting under false colors ? Yes, you are. And now, as she spoke, the Lady Alexandrina blushed beneath her hat; and dull as was the remaining light of the evening, Crosbie, looking into her face, saw her height- ened color. Yes, you are. A gentleman is fighting under false colors who comes into a house like this, with a public rumor of his being engaged, and then conducts himself as thugh nothing of the kind existed. Of course, it is not any thing to me specially; but that is fight- ing under false colors. Now, Sir, you may re- deem the promise you made me when you first came here, or you may let it alone. It must be acknowledged that the lady was fighting her battle with much courage, and also with some skill. In three or four days Crosbie would be gone; and this victory, if it were ever to be gained, must be gained in those three or four days. And if there were to be no victory, then it would be only fair that Crosbie should be punished for his duplicity, and that she should 96 HARPERS NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE. be avenged as far as any revenge might be in future conduct. It must not be supposed that her power. Not that she meditated any deep the declaration just made by him had been pro- revenge, or was prepared to feel any strong an- duced solely by his difficulty at the moment. ger. She liked Crosbie as well as she had ever The atmosphere of Courcy Castle had been at liked any man. She believed that he liked her work upon him for the last week past. And also. She had no conception of any very strong every word that he had heard, and every word passion, but conceived that a married life was that he had spoken, had tended to destroy all more pleasant than one of single bliss. She that was good and true within Mm, and to fos- had no doubt that he had promised to make Lily ter all that was selfish and false. He had said Dale his wife, but so had he previously promised to himself a dozen times during that week that her, or nearly so. It was a fair game, and she he never could be happy with Lily Dale, and would win it if she could. If she failed she that he never could make her happy. And then would show her anger; but she would showit he had used the old sophistry in his endeavor to in a mild, weak mannerturning up her nose teach himself that it was right to do that which at Lily before Crosbies face, and saying little he wished to do. Would it not be better for things against himself behind his back. Her Lily that he should desert her than marry her wrath would not carry her much beyond that, against the dictates of his own heart? And if Now, Sir, you may redeem the promise you he really did not love her, would he not be com- made me when you first came hereor you may mitting a greater crime in marrying her than in let it alone. So she spoke, and then she turn~ deserting her? He confessed to himself that he ed her face away from him, gazing out into the had been very wrong in allowing the outer world darkness. to get such a hold upon him, that the love of a Alexandrina ! he said. pure girl like Lily could not suffice for his hap- Well, Sir? But you have no right to speak piness. But there was the fact, and he found to me in that style. You know that you have himself unable to contend against it. If by any no right to call me by my name in that way!, absolute self-sacrifice he could secure Lilys well- You mean that you iDsist upon your title ? being, he would not hesitate for a moment. But All ladies insist on what you call their title would it be well to sacrifice her as well as him- from gentlemen, except nuder the privilege of self? greater intimacy than you have the right to He had discussed the matter in this way with- claim. You did not call Miss Dale by her in his own breast, till he had almost taught Christian name till you had obtained permission, himself to believe that it was his duty to break I suppose ? off his engagement with Lily; and he had also You used to let me call you so. almost taught himself to believe that a marriage Never! Once or twice, when you have with a daughter of the house of Courcy would done so, I have not forbidden it, as I should satisfy his ambition and assist him in his battle have done. Very wqll, Sir, as you have nothing with the world. That Lady Alexandrina would to tell me, I will leave you. I must confess accept him he felt certain, if he could only in- that I did not think you were such a coward. duce her to forgive him for his sin in becoming And she prepared to go, gathering up the skirts engaged to Miss Dale. How very prone she of her habit, and taking up the whip which she would be to forgiveness in this matter he had had laid on the window-sill, not divined, having not as yet learned how easi- Stay a moment, Alexandrina, he said; I ly such a woman can forgive such a sin, if the am not happy, and you should not say words ultimate triumph be accorded to herself. intended to make me more miserable. And there was another reason which operated And why are you unhappy ? much with Crosbie, urging him on in his pres- Because I will tell you instantly, if I ent mood and wishes, though it should have may believe that I am telling you only, and not given an exactly opposite impulse to his heart. the whole household. He had hesitated as to marrying Lily Dale at Of course I shall not talk of it to others. once because of the smallness of his income. Do you think that I can not keep a secret? Now he had a prospect of considerable increase It is because I have promised to marry one to that income. One of the commissioners at wo~an, and because I love another. I have his office had been promoted to some greater ~l~you every thing now; and if you choose to commissionership, and it was understood by ev- say again that I am fighting under false colors cry body that the secretary at the General Coin- I will leave the castle before you can see me mittee Office would be the new commissioner. again.. As to that there was no doubt. But then the Mr. Crosbie ! question had arisen as to the place of secretary. Now you know it all, and may imagine Crosbie had received two or three letters on the whether or no I am very happy. I think you subject, and it seemed that the likelihood of his said it was time to dress; suppose we go? And obtaining this step in the world was by no means without further speech the two went off to their slight. It would increase his official income separate rooms~ from seven hundred a year to twelve, and would Crosbie, as soon as he was alone inhis chain- place him altogether above the world. His her, sat himself down in his arm-chair, and went friend, the present secretary, had written to him, to work striving to make up his mind as to his assuring him that no other probable competitor THE SMALL HOUSE.AT~ALLINGTO~N. 97 was spoken of as being in the field against him. If such good fortune awaited him, would it not smooth any present difficulty which lay in the way of his marriage with Lily Dale? But, alas, he had not looked at the matter in. that light! Might not the countess help him to this prefer- ment? And if his destiny intended for him the good things of this worldsecretaryships, com- missionerships, chairmanships, and such like, would it not be well that he should struggle on in his upward path by such assistance as good connections might give him? He sat thinking over it all in his own room on that evening. He had written twice to Lily since his arrival at Courcy Castle. His first letter has been given. His second was written much in the same tone; though Lily, as she had read it, had unconscioCsly felt somewhat less satisfied than she had been with the first. Ex- pressions of love were not wanting, but they were vague and without heartiness. They sa- vored of insincerity, though there was nothing in the words themselves to convict them. Few liars can lie with the full roundness and self- sufficiency of truth; and Crosbie, bad as he was, had not yet become bad enough to reach that perfection. He had said nothing to Lily of the hopes of promotion which had been opened to him; but he had again spoken of his own world- linessacknowledging that he received an un- satisfying satisfaction from the pomps and van- ities of Courcy Castle. In fact he was paving the way for that. which he had almost resolved that he would do, now he had told Lady Alex- andrina that he loved her; and he was obliged to confess to himself that the die was cast. As he thought of all this there was not want- ing to him some of the satisfaction of an escape. Soon after making that declaration of love at Allington he had begun to feel that in making it he had cut his throat. He had endeavored to persuade himself that he could live comfort- ably with his throat cut in that way; and as long as Lily was with him he would believe that he could do so; but as soon as he was again alone he would again accuse himself of suicide. This was his frame of mind even while he was yet at Allington, and his ideas on the subject had become stronger during his sojourn at Cour- cy. But the self-immolation had not been com- pleted, and he now began to think that he could save himself. I need hardly say that this was not